Day 171 - 11 Oct 95 - Page 32
1 documentation in relation to limited days which might
2 include the people who have been named, so in so far as
3 I am contemplating that discovery is justified to that
4 extent, why should I exclude all the others? The only
5 objection for having all the others in in the first place
6 was that the discovery would be too copious.
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: Oh, my Lord, that is only one objection. If one
9 can go back to first principles, suppose that there had
10 been a proper pleading based on what Mr. Logan had said in
11 his written statement, which is in the utmost generality, a
12 pleading saying that people were regularly scheduled at
13 unsocial hours, or whatever, as a way of punishing them,
14 that would have been the subject of a request for further
15 and better particulars, which is in effect what we have
16 done in this case, because when Mr. Morris first raised
17 this I said to your Lordship -- and I believe your Lordship
18 was inclined to agree with me -- that I was not willing to
19 give discovery until I had chapter and verse from
20 Mr. Logan. Lo and behold, Mr. Morris having spoken to
21 Mr. Logan on the telephone, we got chapter and verse for a
22 number of people; and I believe that I must make discovery
23 in relation to those people. What I do not understand is
24 why I should be compelled to allow Mr. Morris and Ms. Steel
25 to trawl through the documents for a case which they do not
26 presently have on the evidence of their witness.
27
28 If they were not able to give names and rough dates in
29 answer to a request for particulars in the ordinary case,
30 then the application would be made to strike it out. It
31 would not be allowed.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Except, you see, normally you would
34 have discovery before you had your witness statements and
35 then, having had the discovery, you would embark on your
36 witness statement. For reasons which appealed to me at the
37 time -- and I have to say still do -- Drake J. decided it
38 should be done the other way round, in effect, and
39 I certainly ruled to that effect afterwards.
40
41 If you are going to have discovery of document X on the
42 basis of a statement which you have got, so that the
43 document is actually going to be there, why not have the
44 lot in? You have decided that discovery is justified on
45 the statements you have.
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I did not concede that. I said
48 I would not make the discovery, unless ordered to do so,
49 until I had details. It is when the details came with the
50 names and approximate dates in some cases, that I said,
51 right, now we must make discovery for those pleaded
52 cases -- if I may put it like that. The rest of all those
53 dozens of names on those sheets of paper are not pleaded.
54
55 As I say, I am quite willing to make a compromise which
56 might appeal to your Lordship, that the identity of the
57 people concerned cannot be relevant until they are pleaded
58 as particular examples of malpractice by McDonald's, which
59 is, in effect, what Mr. Logan is saying, for all that the
60 documents may show it is not true. What I do not believe
