Day 270 - 28 Jun 96 - Page 45
1 admissible or not and such statements or parts of
2 statements, as I rule, are admissible you read out and such
3 statements or parts of statements as I rule inadmissible
4 are not read out.
5
6 As I have said before, we would not have this argument at
7 this stage if you said you just wanted to take them as
8 read, because then it could probably be put over to
9 submissions in due course. So, what you have to do, you
10 have either got to deal with this now, or you have got to
11 ask me, which I would probably accede to (as I have done in
12 the past), and say, "Give us time to think about this",
13 because if there is anything, if this witness' written
14 statement is to be read, or parts of it are to be read,
15 they can be read quite shortly at some date within the next
16 fortnight when it is decided, or you can argue the matter
17 now and I will decide it now and the whole or parts of the
18 statement will be read according to my ruling.
19
20 MS. STEEL: If I just say one thing. I think it might be better
21 if it is left over to another date so we can have a bit of
22 time to think about it. But the reason we got the
23 statement from Leanne Claufine-Caston is because we had
24 actually pleaded about this, that we would be relying on
25 this article and relying on statements made within the
26 article by the beef inspectors who were working at the
27 plant supplying the beef for McDonald's, that we wanted to
28 rely on what they had said in terms about the hygiene and
29 the conditions that the animals were slaughtered in. On
30 that occasion Mr. Rampton said that if we wanted to put a
31 Civil Evidence Act notice on the statements within the
32 article of the individuals, which we have been able to do
33 for other articles, we would need a statement to back up --
34 just, basically, say that the statements in the article
35 were accurate.
36
37 So, that was the purpose of getting the statement really
38 and, obviously, what she saw with her own eyes was included
39 in the statement because that helped to explain the overall
40 picture. But the basic purpose of the statement was to
41 confirm that the parts of the article that we wanted to
42 rely on, i.e. what was said by the meat inspectors, were
43 accurate quotes.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not questioning your motives at the
46 moment. I have to rule on it according to whether it is
47 legally admissible or not. Can you give me the reference
48 to the article?
49
50 MR. MORRIS: Yes, it is in the section of food poisoning,
51 section 5.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which bundle was it?
54
55 MR. MORRIS: It is the abstracts.
56
57 MS. STEEL: Do you mean where the article is?
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, I want to look at the actual article
60 again, because you cross-examined was it Dr. Gomez Gonzales
