Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 28


     
     1        not hold that kind of position within the Company.
     2
     3        We use the words, roughly speaking, from one of the
     4        authorities: were they the agents of the Company for the
     5        purpose of making those statements; to which the answer
     6        must plainly be "no".  My Lord, that is without evidence.
     7
     8        What I now offer your Lordship is actual evidence to show
     9        -- and I am sorry that this comes late, because the
    10        authority of Managers to speak to the press has not been an
    11        issue in this case until now -- two pages (and I will get
    12        the whole books in due course) from the Managers' Handbooks
    13        of 1982 and 1986, which are both headed "Interviews with
    14        News Media".
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Are these in evidence yet?
    17
    18   MR. RAMPTON:  No, they are not.  If your Lordship would like me
    19        to prove them strictly, I will do so.  In a sense, this is
    20        a step which, in my submission, I do not need to take
    21        because, as I say, on the facts before your Lordship --
    22        which are the unproved statements of Harriet Lamb in her
    23        written material and the statements or the interviews of
    24        Lynval and Mark Ryan -- even on that material, there is no
    25        room for any inference that either of those persons were
    26        authorised to speak to the press in the way that they did.
    27
    28        My Lord, if it be required, I will prove these strictly.
    29        What they do, in our respectful submission -- if they are
    30        what I say they are -- is to show very clearly that even if
    31        there were room for such a prima facie inference or
    32        presumption, it is destroyed by these sheets of paper.
    33
    34        As they have not strictly been proved, your Lordship may
    35        prefer that I do not read them out.
    36
    37   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Well, I will read them to myself.
    38
    39   MR. RAMPTON:  I am grateful.  They seem to be more or less
    40        identical -- more or less, not quite.  (Pause)
    41
    42        It is the 1986 one which is obviously the relevant one,
    43        because it is the end of 1986, and I think these interviews
    44        took place in 1987.
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    47
    48   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, if that is what I have said it is, that
    49        page, quite clearly not only is there no authority for a
    50        Manager -- or, indeed, anyone else -- absent an express 
    51        authorisation for a particular occasion, but there is no 
    52        general authority in a Manager of a store to talk to the 
    53        press at all; everything has to be referred to the Public
    54        Relations department of the Company.  In an emergency, he
    55        has to speak first to an Operations Supervisor or Senior
    56        Supervisor or an Operations Manager, to get the home
    57        telephone numbers of the Public Relations Manager or
    58        Directors.
    59
    60        That being so, it is perfectly clear that neither Lynval

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