Day 255 - 23 May 96 - Page 55
1 that all information about inquiry agents' investigations
2 or observations is privileged if it is obtained and passed
3 to the Plaintiffs' solicitors for the purpose of obtaining
4 advice in relation to legal proceedings which are
5 contemplated, a fortiori, if it is information after the
6 30th September, 1990, being instigated. It is helpful that
7 you made it clear. Perhaps it should have been clear to me
8 before that you say it applies to communications between
9 the client and the third party which do not go on to the
10 solicitor.
11
12 MR. RAMPTON: So it would appear.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But that is a relevant distinction here, is
15 it, because in so far as the information, for instance, as
16 to dates when Frances Tiller Davidson and Michelle Hooker
17 and a third unidentified inquiry agent attended meetings
18 and where the meetings were and what they may have observed
19 at those meetings, in so far as that information comes to
20 the client in the form of reports from one or other firm of
21 inquiry agents, if those reports anyway are obtained also
22 for the purposes of the solicitors and go to them, then the
23 distinction may not be material.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: In the circumstances of this case, in fact, the
26 primary receptacle for all the material was the
27 solicitors. So it probably does not matter.
28
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but there are some other communications,
30 are there, to which your additional limb might be relevant,
31 i.e. ones which did not go to the solicitor but go to the
32 client?
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: Not so far as I know, no. I merely mention that
35 in passing only to illustrate, perhaps, how little I knew
36 about it; but, no, not so far as I know. I say that
37 because I am sometimes wrong, but not so far as I know. My
38 belief is that everything that is of any relevance that was
39 communicated by the inquiry agents in relation to this
40 case, or the contemplation of this case, went straight to
41 the solicitors, who may or may not -- and again I am not
42 certain -- have showed it to the clients. I think in many
43 cases they did not.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So it would be covered by the first limb
46 anyway, the communication with solicitors?
47
48 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, indeed it would.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: In other words, covered by -- there may be
51 need for further elaboration in argument -- but covered by
52 the parts you read from the White Book which refer to
53 documents but which, you say, refer to any other kind of
54 communication of information?
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: Certainly. I mean, there are lots of authority
57 about that. I have no doubt about that.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But it is that rule which covers what you are
60 saying the Defendants are not entitled to know?
