Day 006 - 05 Jul 94 - Page 82
1
MR. MORRIS: I cannot find the papers -- I did copy them and
2 bring them -- we are going to find a document where a
document that was disclosed to us is different from the
3 document which was originally disclosed -- sorry, the
document in the trial bundle is different from the
4 original document disclosed to us. Some of the documents,
obviously, have had the pages reversed to make them more
5 intelligible because some of the documents were a bit
jumbled up, which we are not complaining about, but it
6 does make it a bit difficult sometimes to find the
documents we have identified. But this particular
7 document was about the use of imported beef and
rainforests. It included some handwritten pages about the
8 prosecution of the BBC. There were four pages ---
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Where did that originate from?
10 MR. MORRIS: -- disclosed that were handwritten with notes on.
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Where did the document come from?
12 MR. MORRIS: Disclosed by the plaintiffs.
13 MR. RAMPTON: It came from Barlow Lyde & Gilbert. As I told
your Lordship on a number of previous occasions, that file
14 which is the World Wildlife Fund file was found in
Barlow's officers when they were looking for something
15 else. The handwritten notes to which Mr. Morris is
referring are draft letters written by a partner in
16 Barlow, Lyde & Gilbert which were disclosed in error.
17 As your Lordship knows, when that happens, the party who
makes the error does not waive privilege of a document of
18 that kind and is entitled to have it back. We have
written to the we have written to the defendants asking
19 for those papers back and we have not had them. That is
the reason they are not in the bundles.
20
MISS STEEL: As I understand it, if the party accidentally
21 makes discovery of a document, it thereby waives the
privilege.
22
MR. JUSTICE BELL: There is authority on it. Mr. Rampton says
23 that it does not. If I am going to decide an issue to
that effect, I will have proper argument on it.
24
MR. MORRIS: Yes, we were not -----
25
MISS STEEL: I do not think we are in a position to argue it
26 now because we have no legal papers with us.
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, it is not the time to do it.
28 MR. MORRIS: The reason I brought it up though is because we do
not know, without checking every document out of tens of
29 thousands, if there may be other pages that have not been
inserted. Because the court was not informed of this, we
30 are seeking a statement from the plaintiffs that this is
the only case where a page or any number of pages were
