Day 157 - 18 Jul 95 - Page 40
1 assured that your recollection about fair and accurate
2 reports is correct. I merely mention paragraph 607 of
3 Gattley on page 259 and it says: "An abridged or condensed
4 report of judicial proceedings must, however, be fair, not
5 garbled so as to produce misrepresentation, nor by
6 suppression of some portion of the evidence giving an
7 entirely false and unjust impression to the prejudice of
8 one of the parties concerned. A report which accurately
9 sets out one part of the proceedings and omits another
10 which gives a different complexion to the whole case will
11 not be privileged. It is not enough to report part of the
12 proceedings correctly if by leaving out other parts you
13 thereby create a false impression."
14
15 My Lord, that is (and always has been) our starting point.
16 As your Lordship knows, we have been concerned about this
17 problem (as we see it) since before Christmas, I think it
18 was, last year when I first mentioned it. We wrote to the
19 Defendants again in March. So now, finally, our patience
20 has run out and with it our generosity in a sense that we
21 are no longer willing to pay for the Defendants to misuse
22 the transcripts in the way suggested in that paragraph in
23 Gattley.
24
25 My Lord, may I start with the allegation the Defendants
26 make or the assertion the Defendants make that your
27 Lordship has some kind of power (and I shall be very brief)
28 to cure what the Defendants see as an unfairness in our
29 refusal to go on paying for them to exploit the transcripts
30 in the way that I have described.
31
32 As far as I can tell (and if I could tell otherwise I would
33 be bound to tell your Lordship), the English court has no
34 express power to order McDonald's to pay for the Defendants
35 to have transcripts. As far as we can tell -- by "we"
36 I mean me and Mr. Atkinson and our solicitors -- the whole
37 extent of the power of the English court at first instance
38 is contained in and implied by Rule 1 of Ord. 68.
39
40 That gives the parties, as your Lordship knows, to the
41 action certain rights. It also provides the possibility
42 that a stranger to the action may acquire a transcript. As
43 we see it, the court's function in relation to Ord. 68, r.
44 1, would simply be to ensure that the rights conferred
45 under Ord. 68, r. 1, were not denied to any of the persons
46 concerned who would be the parties and any third party who
47 might on proper grounds apply for a transcript.
48
49 Nor, my Lord, have we found any express power in the
50 English court to order payment for transcripts out of
51 public funds, except in relation to impoverished
52 respondents to appeals, not even, one notices from Rule 5
53 of Ord. 68, impoverished Defendants.
54
55 That being so, any kind of an inferential suggestion that
56 there was some kind of inherent power in the court, a kind
57 of omnipotence really, I believe, is what Defendants are
58 suggesting, either to pull McDonald's purse strings or the
59 Lord Chancellor's in order to provide payment for the
60 transcripts really is not available. One only has to
