Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 27


     
     1        inspector or one of his superiors, about a matter of that
     2        kind.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If the journalist is employed at the store
     5        and makes an inquiry about being paid overtime, for
     6        instance, and the Manager says: "If you work more than
     7        39 hours you will be paid, but you will be paid your same
     8        hourly rate", then does it follow that one has to ask
     9        whether the question is being asked by the journalist as
    10        employee or as journalist, because the question of
    11        admissibility in the first case, by the authorities, the
    12        answer would be admissible as an admission on behalf of the
    13        employer, because managers are there to answer employees'
    14        queries about pay and overtime and such, among other
    15        matters; but you would say, if the truth of the matter is
    16        that even though the journalist is an employee, the purpose
    17        of the inquiry is as journalist, to find out information
    18        about working at McDonald's, then even the Store Manager
    19        (let alone the Assistant Manager) is not authorised to
    20        answer a journalist's queries.
    21
    22   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, absolutely, precisely.  It does depend
    23        upon the occasion; it depends upon the identity of the
    24        person to whom the statement is made, as well as on the
    25        position of the person who makes the statement.  Plainly,
    26        in the first example your Lordship gives, the Manager has
    27        not simply authority, but he has duty to respond to the
    28        reasonable inquiries of his employees about their pay and
    29        conditions; plainly he does.
    30
    31        Where the inquiry is made by the journalist qua journalist,
    32        then the position is completely different.  Not only does
    33        the Manager not have any duty to make any response to the
    34        journalist at all; he has no authority to do so.  Even if
    35        -- and I do not make anything like this concession; on the
    36        authorities, I do not have to -- but even if it might be
    37        said, well, there might be circumstances in which, on the
    38        face of it, prima facie, a Manager might have some kind of
    39        implied authority on a restricted or limited basis to speak
    40        to the person, that is itself a rebuttable inference or
    41        presumption.
    42
    43        So, my Lord, I come to the actual facts, which can be
    44        stated, in our submission, very shortly.  There is no
    45        evidence that the statements which were made by Mark Ryan
    46        and the man Lynval were expressly authorised by the
    47        Company.
    48
    49        It would appear, from looking at the notes or transcript of
    50        those interviews, that the questions were asked and 
    51        answered by Ms. Lamb in her capacity as a member of the 
    52        press, as a journalist. 
    53
    54        The character of the statement which is recorded is that it
    55        forms part of the foundation for an article or articles in
    56        a newspaper.  The two persons concerned were not even Store
    57        Managers; they were Assistant Managers; and there could be
    58        no reasonable basis for an inference even that they had
    59        some implied authority from the Company to make statements
    60        of whatever kind, really, to a journalist.  They simply do

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