Day 070 - 20 Dec 94 - Page 08
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is a question of what you and Ms. Steel
2 want to do, Mr. Morris. You have heard what I have said
3 about it. I am not deciding the matter, but I fear that if
4 the point is pressed now, the answer is that there is
5 nothing I could do, even if I wanted to. That would not be
6 the end of the day, because you would come back in January
7 or February, after Dr. Gomez Gonzalez' evidence, with,
8 I would suggest, a list -- I appreciate it might take a
9 little time; someone has to go probably through the
10 transcript of his evidence -- of documents which you think
11 he has said he has seen which have not so far been
12 disclosed or, at least, fairly precise categories of that.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: Yes. We accept that we cannot have any kind of
15 decision or ruling or direction, or anything, at the
16 moment, because we ourselves have not had time to read the
17 affidavit properly. But, if I may make some observations
18 which may help the Plaintiffs?
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, do.
21
22 MR. MORRIS: First of all, Mr. Rampton does not seem to realise
23 that the only reason that Dr. Gomez Gonzalez was allowed to
24 talk to anybody during his evidence was in order to seek
25 out documents to disclose in the case. So that if
26 Dr. Gomez Gonzalez had spoken to people in Costa Rica, as
27 he said he did, he would obviously have been doing that in
28 order to inform Mr. Rampton about what he found, or inform
29 the solicitors about what he found. So the fact that
30 Mr. Rampton has not had a chance to talk to
31 Dr. Gomez Gonzalez and, therefore, does not know what he
32 may or may not have seen, I find very hard to believe. It
33 also casts further doubt on the conversations that we want
34 to bring up later that Dr. Gomez Gonzalez had.
35
36 The first thing is, the documents he alluded to in his
37 reference, no doubt, were things that he had either seen or
38 had talked about with people in Costa Rica during the
39 actual evidence.
40
41 Secondly, the case was pleaded in 1990 -- the Defence was
42 pleaded in 1990 -- and it is said in the affidavit that
43 documents are kept in Costa Rica for approximately two
44 years -- which seems to be a very short time, but that is
45 what it says -- and in Guatemala for five years. Guatemala
46 and Costa Rica were both pleaded in the original Defence in
47 1990. So, obviously, as it was involved with litigation
48 and the fact that Mr. Cesca says, I think it is paragraph
49 4, about obviously anything relevant to current litigation
50 -- I cannot remember the phrase.
51
52 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, this is, with greatest respect, quite
53 wrong. The Defence was pleaded in 1990. I do not know
54 whether the Further and Better Particulars were given, but
55 when they were, the year relevant to Guatemala was 1979,
56 the only pleaded year, and the years for Costa Rica were
57 1983, 1984 and 1988.
58
59 MR. MORRIS: So that is one thing I would like to say about
60 ongoing litigation. Also, I cannot find it in Mr. Cesca's
