Day 136 - 16 Jun 95 - Page 26
1 the court's time, but also the personal convenience of
2 witnesses, but it is the way it is normally done. I do not
3 want great margins for error left so we are running out of
4 witnesses each day with a considerable part of the court
5 day left.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the only one other thing I would like to
8 mention at the moment is this: I am sure that one way or
9 another we can fill up the rest of July, not, I fear, with
10 employment witnesses for, as your Lordship has observed,
11 many of them (and there are not that many anyway) are going
12 to be pretty short. The only ones that might take a bit of
13 time are Mark Davies and Mr. Stanton.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
16
17 MR. RAMPTON: The reason for that is that they deal with
18 Colchester where four out of the nine witnesses that the
19 Defendants have indicated they will call come from
20 Colchester in a particular period. So, Mr. Davies and
21 Mr. Stanton will have to deal with all of those, so they
22 may take a bit of time. The rest of them will be, I
23 suspect, rather suspect.
24
25 My Lord, there are a number of remnants which again, it is
26 entirely a matter for your Lordship, and have no submission
27 to make, but people who are either half finished or not yet
28 been called on other topics. It might be convenient if
29 there is time to fit them in before the end of July. I do
30 not know whether your Lordship will sit on 31st July which
31 is a Monday?
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I would like to do is let us see how we
34 are doing, as I have said, by Thursday afternoon. If a
35 more accurate estimate then can be given of how long
36 Mr. Stein is going to last, we can start working from
37 there. What did you want to say?
38
39 MS. STEEL: You were asking us about how long, you know, we
40 thought the witnesses would take and things like that. We
41 did a get letter from the Plaintiffs a short while ago -- I
42 cannot remember exactly when it was -- saying that they
43 were intending to serve some supplementary statements, go
44 through our witnesses' evidence and serve supplementary
45 statements. Obviously, it is going to be difficult for us
46 to judge how long we think people might take if we do not
47 know whether the Plaintiffs are still intending to serve
48 more statements for particular witnesses. So, I think it
49 would be helpful, if they are still intending to do, if
50 they could do that as soon as possible.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Fair enough, but if, for instance, a witness
53 at the moment it looked as if your cross-examination might
54 last an hour, then even if there is a supplementary
55 statement, that might only extend it to an hour an half; if
56 you look at it now and you think it is going to be 20
57 minutes, it might only extend it to three quarters of an
58 hour. We have to do our best to have a realistic idea of
59 how long witnesses take. We have to be prepared to have
60 more witnesses at court on a particular day or particular
