Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 13
1 contents of documents about which there might well be
2 admissibility?
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: I do not know but that has been the way of it so
5 far. It makes me very jumpy, as your Lordship has seen,
6 because -- I do not mind what your Lordship reads, that
7 worries me not in the very least -- it is in open court
8 and, I will be frank, because my perception is that to an
9 extent, at least, the Defendants have abused that. It does
10 make me jumpy.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not personally myself raising that as a
13 concern, it is just it is easier to deal with.
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, yes, but, with respect, I am entitled, so
16 far as I can persuade your Lordship to agree with me, to
17 protect my clients against the use of inadmissible material
18 to, as it were, adversely affect their interests. If, on an
19 application for discovery, for example, that is a risk,
20 then, my Lord, in the exercise of your Lordship's
21 discretion, I would submit that the right thing to do is to
22 sit in chambers until the matter has been resolved. If the
23 documents then come out, because your Lordship makes an
24 order or because I volunteer them, and if they become
25 admissible in evidence, why, then no harm is done; if they
26 do not become admissible or they are not disclosable, why,
27 then a potential harm is prevented.
28
29 MS. STEEL: We would ask that the court does remain open. If
30 there is some particular document that comes up that
31 Mr. Rampton is particularly sensitive about, then perhaps
32 we can deal with it then and we will not read anything out
33 or anything like that. That was not what I was going to do
34 with this topic. I just wanted to -----
35
36 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, all right. Carry on then.
37
38 MS. STEEL: I understood the point about serving a Civil
39 Evidence Act Notice on a document, not meaning that the
40 whole document was evidence in relation to a press report
41 because it would only be the statement of an individual
42 made in there. What I am not quite sure is how that would
43 apply to this document, because it appears to be an
44 official report all the way through.
45
46 So, I was wondering whether, if it is thought that this
47 does not apply to this document, that could be explained in
48 terms of pointing out a paragraph, but I cannot really see
49 how that would apply to this.
50
51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is lost on me at the moment, your
52 suggestion that because a report was "official", whatever
53 that might mean, it had some status, evidential status,
54 different to any other document, is news to me.
55
56 MR. MORRIS: I thought Mr. Rampton's point from the White Book
57 was that if something is compiled by someone acting out
58 their duty, then the whole document -----
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, that is not the point.
