Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 26


     
     1        "... justice cannot always be measured in terms of money
     2        and in my view a judge is entitled to weigh in the balance
     3        the strain the litigation imposes on litigants,
     4        particularly if they are personal litigants, rather than
     5        business corporations."
     6
     7        Obviously, that applies very much to us.  We do find this
     8        litigation a big strain.  It does basically mean that we
     9        virtually do not have any lives outside this case.  We do
    10        not have time to do all the things that we want to do; in
    11        fact, we do not have time to do hardly any of the things we
    12        want to do.
    13
    14        "The anxieties occasioned by facing new issues, the raising
    15        of false hopes....."
    16
    17        On the subject of raising false hopes, when we got the
    18        Plaintiffs' witnesses to agree to the fact that it was
    19        generally accepted that there was a link between diet and
    20        disease, our hopes were raised and we did feel that we had
    21        won that point.  To now change the case, so that we have to
    22        build the case all over again, does have an effect on us.
    23
    24        "The anxieties occasioned by facing new issues, the raising
    25        of false hopes, and the legitimate expectation that the
    26        trial will determine the issues one way or the other.
    27        Furthermore, to allow an amendment before a trial begins is
    28        quite different from allowing it at the end of the trial to
    29        give an apparently unsuccessful defendant an opportunity to
    30        renew the fight on an entirely different defence."
    31
    32        And, we would submit, to give an apparently unsuccessful
    33        Plaintiff an opportunity to renew the fight on an entirely
    34        pleaded meaning and Statement of Claim.
    35
    36        Whilst we are looking at that paragraph, yesterday,
    37        Mr. Rampton said that you could ignore the question of the
    38        cost, because there had been no cost to us and would be no
    39        costs to us in allowing the amendments.  I wanted to say
    40        that I actually found that an extremely offensive remark.
    41
    42        Firstly, there has been a cost to us in financial terms in
    43        preparing the case, doing research, photocopying,
    44        contacting witnesses, paying their fares to get to court,
    45        making all the arrangements to get them to court.
    46
    47        Perhaps in the terms of the sort of money that McDonald's
    48        has to throw around, the amount we have spent is peanuts,
    49        but, in terms of what our income is, the cost has been very
    50        substantial indeed. 
    51 
    52        As a proportion of each parties' respective income, I think 
    53        I could very safely say that we have spent far, far more on
    54        our case than the Plaintiffs have done on theirs.
    55
    56        Furthermore, our funds are limited.  The more we spend on
    57        the nutrition issue, the less we have to spend on the other
    58        issues, which may cause difficulties with paying for the
    59        fares of other witnesses to get to court and other work
    60        that has to be to be done for the purposes of this case.

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