Day 110 - 29 Mar 95 - Page 24
1 satisfactory solution, to me the reservations which you
2 have about it.
3
4 What one has to keep reminding oneself of, it seems to me,
5 is what the alternative to reaching some kind of agreement
6 is. Had it not been for my suggestion at an interlocutory
7 stage about how the witnesses might more conveniently be
8 called, unless Mr. Rampton had suggested it or you had
9 suggested it, this case would have followed the normal
10 course, which is that Mr. Rampton would have called all his
11 witnesses in whatever order he wanted to, without any
12 breaks in between them -- whether we then started at the
13 end of June or a little later, it is now totally academic
14 to debate -- Mr. Rampton would have called every one of his
15 witnesses one after the other in whatever order he wanted
16 to. Then, when he got to the end of that exercise, I would
17 have called upon Ms. Steel to call such witnesses as she
18 wanted to and then I would have called upon you,
19 Mr. Morris, to call whatever witnesses you wanted to call,
20 including in the case of each of you yourselves.
21
22 That would, I think, have been a most inconvenient and
23 unhelpful way of doing it. We have got on through a number
24 of the witnesses now. If we ever come to a stage where
25 co-operation breaks down, the only course to take is to go
26 back from now on to what would be the normal procedure with
27 Mr. Rampton calling all the rest of his witnesses and you
28 calling yours. I think all parties probably want to try to
29 avoid that if they possibly can.
30
31 MS. STEEL: Even if we went back to that system, I would be
32 surprised if there was not some power that you had for
33 breaks for the sake of our health and things like that.
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, I could do that. What I am doing is
36 comparing the situation we are in with what would be the
37 normal procedure in a case.
38
39 MS. STEEL: Save with a few specific examples, we are not
40 demanding that their witnesses are called in a particular
41 order; it is concern about sufficient time for preparation
42 and for our health.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: All I am doing is reminding myself as well as
45 you of what the alternative was to doing these things by
46 agreement.
47
48 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, this schedule that I have now, as
49 I explained yesterday, is a loose schedule. There will be
50 lots of gaps in it, as the Defendants know perfectly well,
51 and accepted yesterday. Their only concern yesterday was
52 that they should not have to do Nicholson on publication
53 and Nicholson on employment, prepare for that all at the
54 same time over the two-and-a-half weeks that they will get
55 over Easter. Subject to that, it is a perfectly gentle,
56 rather loose schedule which allows plenty of time to relax
57 and to prepare between now and the end of June.
58
59 MS. STEEL: Actually, that is not right.
60
