Day 084 - 07 Feb 95 - Page 13


     
     1        the index file.  I keep a separate file of what I call
     2        miscellaneous documents of that kind, but it has not got a
     3        name.  I am not proposing to tell anyone what is in it.
     4        The indices might be the place for it to go since
     5        Mrs. Brinley-Codd keeps her lavender diary in that file as
     6        well as a sort of master guide to who the people are and
     7        where the documents are to be found.  There was originally,
     8        in addition to the handwritten sheets your Lordship has
     9        there, a big green one that Mrs. Brinley-Codd did up to the
    10        end of the summer term of documents handed in.
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I do not know where that is.  Perhaps at some
    13        stage someone could come up and just see if they can
    14        identify it in one of my bundles.  Yes, Mr. Morris?  Leave
    15        that for the moment.  Come back to it when you have given
    16        yourself an opportunity to read Mrs. Brinley-Codd's work.
    17
    18   MR. MORRIS:  There are two reports which we want Civil Evidence
    19        Act Notices on, which is the Preston final report on a
    20        cluster of cases, Public Health Laboratory Service
    21        documents, which we faxed to the CDSC, Communicable
    22        Diseases Surveillance Centre, and to the person who
    23        prepared it, Dr. Roberta Marshall.  They verified it was
    24        the final report, the document that we had.
    25
    26        So, we would like a Civil Evidence Act notice on that, and
    27        also on the Oregon 1982 report from America which was sent
    28        to us by whatever they are called.  It was sent to us by
    29        the people that did the report.  It was the Federal Disease
    30        Control Centre or whatever it was called -- Centre for
    31        Communicable Diseases.  That is all we have to say on that.
    32        They are documents 23 and 25 on the Defendants' second
    33        Supplementary List.
    34
    35        We were checking some of the law in this area because, if
    36        it helps the court, Order 27 Rule 4.1 says, we believe,
    37        that if a list is served and is not challenged, any
    38        document is not challenged by the other party, the document
    39        is deemed to be original and authentic.  But, in any event,
    40        we did contact both those, we got the document directly
    41        from -- well, we checked the Preston one with the author to
    42        check its authenticity, double check.  OK.
    43
    44        The next point is the counterclaim matter we would like to
    45        bring up.
    46
    47   MS. STEEL:  This was the point about Mr. Rampton being able to
    48        pick and choose which parts of the leaflet he says are
    49        false in relation to the counterclaim.  Our application is
    50        that the Plaintiffs should be required to plead which parts 
    51        they are saying are false and then they should be put to 
    52        proving those parts.  Until they do that it is impossible 
    53        for us to fight the case fairly really without -- we are
    54        fighting blind, in effect, because we do not know what the
    55        Plaintiffs are saying, which parts they are trying to prove
    56        are false and which parts they are not.
    57
    58        If they are saying that something is not true, they cannot
    59        rely on the inference that it has not been proved but it is
    60        true.

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