Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 07
1 paying for an urgent transcript; there would not be an
2 urgent transcript, and you would just have to wait for your
3 three weeks. Barnett Lenton, therefore, no doubt -- and,
4 it seems to me, quite properly -- think it is only right to
5 see if McDonald's have any objection since, were it not for
6 the fact that McDonald's are paying the commercial rate in
7 the first instance, you would not be able to get them for
8 œ20. Is there any objection to that, Mr. Rampton?
9
10 MR. RAMPTON: To what, my Lord?
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: To the Defendants having their copies at the
13 œ20 rate, but sooner rather than later.
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. There is every objection to that.
16 If the Defendants will undertake not to misuse them, we
17 will go on paying for them fully on the daily basis that
18 they have at the moment. Since they have not been willing
19 to give that undertaking, I want to put every obstacle in
20 the way of them and their cronies against the misuse of
21 these transcripts outside court.
22
23 I am not in the least bit interested in interfering with
24 the Defendants' conduct of their defence. That would be
25 against my interests and against your Lordship's interests
26 and against the interests of justice. I am not the least
27 bit interested in that. What I am concerned about is that
28 this flow of disinformation should be stemmed, so far as it
29 is within our power to stem it. If they get a wodge of
30 transcripts after three weeks, because they can find the
31 œ20 per copy, there is nothing I can do about that.
32 Happily, that will make the task of those who have to put
33 together these disinformation documents a bit harder than
34 it would be if they got them on a daily basis. But I am
35 certainly not going to agree that they should have them at
36 the cheap rate on a daily basis.
37
38 MS. STEEL: To be honest, I am quite astounded by what
39 Mr. Rampton has said. We have already said that we are not
40 distributing the transcripts. This was supposed to be a
41 matter of copyright, or something like that. If we
42 purchase copies -- I mean, as far as we are concerned,
43 there is absolutely no reason why we should not let people
44 know what is going on in court, in any event. But,
45 certainly, if we purchase copies ourselves, there is
46 absolutely nothing the Plaintiffs could do to stop anything
47 we wanted to do with the transcripts. I am not, by that,
48 admitting to anything that Mr. Rampton is alleging.
49
50 The only possible reason why the Plaintiffs could be
51 objecting to this is to affect our conduct and defence of
52 our case in court, because we are going to get the
53 transcripts anyway if we raise the money. The only
54 difference is going to be that we are not going to get them
55 in time to use them for cross-examining the witnesses in
56 the witness box, so that we can actually help move the
57 court along by saying: "Well, you said such and such at
58 line such and such on day such and such", rather than
59 having to do it from our notebook or our memories.
60
