Day 171 - 11 Oct 95 - Page 29
1 that people might have some recollection -----
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: I have no difficulty in principle. My fear of
4 this is simply -- if I can deal with the question of
5 nearness at the same time -- one knows what happens; one
6 has a single store, and we have two months, perhaps in the
7 same year, perhaps in different years, for that single
8 store out of however many. If one has in front of one, let
9 us say, 200 sheets of paper with I do not know how many
10 names on them, they are terribly hard work, because one has
11 to work through each day, working out when the hours are
12 worked and how much at the end of the week or end of the
13 month the person had worked, and so on and so forth. They
14 are very hard work. We are literally going to spend, if
15 I know my Defendants -- and I believe that I do -- days and
16 days and days, in effect, snooping through the documents
17 for a case which presently is not pleaded. I mind less,
18 I think, about disclosing 200 pages of document. What I do
19 mind about is being asked -- and this is a slightly
20 separate point -- to disclose the names of people who are
21 not only not witnesses in the case, but who have not even
22 been mentioned, and who certainly are not coming to court
23 to say that what Mr. Logan says is perfectly right or: "Yes
24 I did work for 40 hours in that week, but I wanted 45 and
25 the rotten manager would not give me 45, because I was
26 going on holiday and I needed the money", or whatever the
27 explanation might be.
28
29 One does have, in my respectful submission, to look -- and
30 I have said this before -- at what the reward is for all
31 this work to which we are asked to devote ourselves and the
32 amount of time and money we have to spend in court while
33 the Defendants hack through little bits of detail. One
34 asks oneself what comes out of it at the end: a conclusion
35 that Mr. So and So or Miss So and So did so many hours in a
36 week. I do ask the question -- I know it is a bit rude --
37 so what?
38
39 If a youth of 23 -- take Mr. Dixon, for example, who is on
40 the sheet and who I propose to disclose -- and I know I am
41 giving evidence, but your Lordship will see it in due
42 course -- one week where he works 45 hours, I think, one
43 week. He is a 23 year old student. What conclusion is
44 your Lordship going to draw from that?
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Why not have the courage of your convictions
47 about that?
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: I do have the courage of them, but if I am to, as
50 it were, put my courage to the sticking place, then I have
51 to make a massive discovery and have to spend hours in
52 court while we hack through each name in turn.
53
54 So far as the named people are concerned, I do not have a
55 problem.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The situation, you would say, is this: if
58 someone is disclosed by the documentation to have worked 45
59 hours a week rather than 39, I have absolutely no reason to
60 assume that that is against their will, it is voluntary;
