Day 147 - 04 Jul 95 - Page 30
1 first instance and makes no provision for such a provision
2 from public funds, as does rule 5; and that, so far as your
3 Lordship's power in the matter under that rule is
4 concerned, is the end of the matter.
5
6 My Lord, there are two things which concern me about this.
7 The first is that your Lordship might even contemplate
8 refusing to have the transcript or CaseView, if we should
9 think that because the Defendants have failed to give the
10 undertaking for which we have asked for, and to which
11 I will return (which is the second thing I want to address
12 just now), if your Lordship should refuse to have either
13 the transcript or CaseView -- and I put this as
14 respectfully as I can -- from some misguided impression
15 that that was fairer to the Defendants, in our respectful
16 submission, and I hope that I am speaking to the converted,
17 that would be, in fact, to quite the contrary effect.
18
19 Above all, it is desirable that your Lordship should have
20 all the available resources to reach the correct decision
21 in this case. Certainly, CaseView is probably the last of
22 those, in the sense that judges who spent years at the Bar
23 know very well how to take notes. CaseView is a help, but
24 it is nothing like -- at least I do not know find it
25 anything like as much assistance as the transcripts.
26
27 I say that this without any sense of humbug. It is in the
28 Defendants' interests that your Lordship should have both
29 CaseView and the transcripts, because if it should turn out
30 at the end of the day that your Lordship has made what we
31 perceive to be a mistake in favour of the Defendants, then
32 the Defendants would be exposed on any subsequent appeal
33 they thought it right to make.
34
35 We are, therefore, very anxious that your Lordship should
36 have no thought of refusing to have those resources to make
37 what we hope and believe will be the correct decision in
38 this case. It is a long case. It is not, perhaps in some
39 senses, a very difficult case, but it is a long case and
40 there has been an awful lot of evidence.
41
42 The misfortune of being a judge, I suppose -- and I am not
43 one -- is the principal burden of seeing at the end of the
44 case that all the evidence is properly reviewed, summarised
45 and adjudicated upon. As the judge, he gets what help he
46 can from the parties, but he, above all, needs to have as
47 full a record as may possibly be available in a case of
48 this kind. Therefore, in order to do justice between the
49 parties, your Lordship is, in fact, the last person who
50 should be deprived of the transcripts or of CaseView.
51
52 It does no injustice whatever to the Defendants that
53 your Lordship should have materials, in that sense, which
54 are unavailable to them. The provision, as your Lordship
55 will observe, of transcripts of what has been said in court
56 is quite distinct from the question of whether one party is
57 allowed to show the judge a document, as Ms. Steel showed
58 the document, for example, to your Lordship, without the
59 other side seeing it. It is nothing to the same point at
60 all.
