Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 62


     
     1
     2   MR. MORRIS:  As we have shown today, some things he has said
     3        have actually been incorrect.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is completely wrong.  I am supposed to
     6        be a lawyer, too, you know, and the law is what the law is,
     7        not what one side says it is.
     8
     9   MR. MORRIS:  Right.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  So I think that is completely off beam. What
    12        you should have an opportunity to say is:  Mr. Rampton may
    13        be right about a lot of the law, but we would argue that he
    14        is wrong about this or wrong about that, and in any event
    15        he has not told you about this or that.
    16
    17   MR. MORRIS:  The trouble is that job is absolutely, you know,
    18        monolithic for us to try to do that, because it is as much
    19        as we can to follow the train of thought.  We do not
    20        generally get a transcript.
    21
    22   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It has been coming up, and I must direct that
    23        you do it by such and such a time, and, quite frankly, it
    24        has to be some time next week so far as the legal points
    25        are concerned.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:  Right.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL: The question is just when.  You were talking
    30        about doing it...  I said today.  Obviously, that is not
    31        possible.  Ms. Steel a few days ago said, can we have until
    32        Monday, and I said that that was all right, and it clearly
    33        is.
    34
    35   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  You know, I mean, the thing is we want to
    36        finish the case by Christmas partly because, you know --
    37        fantastic, we can relax a little bit after three or four
    38        years of continuous pressure, but at the same time, I mean,
    39        obviously, if we finish by the end of this term we have
    40        very little time to play with.  But these legal points are
    41        very, very important because you can win a whole case on
    42        the evidence and then lose on interpretation and legal
    43        points, which cannot be in the interests of justice that we
    44        have not had the same opportunities.
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  At the moment, you see, I do not know where
    47        you are actually going to join issue with Mr. Rampton's
    48        legal point.  It is true that it is an adversarial system,
    49        but in most of the cases where there has been a legal
    50        argument with equally matched counsel on both sides in very 
    51        many of those cases when counsel actually stand up and 
    52        argue it you find there is no difference between them, or 
    53        you find that the difference between them covers about ten
    54        per cent of the argument or the points.
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:  I think if we had had legal aid we would have been
    57        represented by a Q.C. and that would be the case, but
    58        because one party clearly is not represented it is
    59        inevitable that the other party feels more confident in
    60        interpreting the law as favourably as possible to their

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