Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 60
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Would you like to go away and refresh your
3 memory, if you ever had one, of where it came from?
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5 MR. ATKINSON: Yes. I know it is a complicated subject, that.
6 Then, my Lord, it really is mea culpa in relation to the
7 next point, because I had simply omitted to put in the
8 reference there. It is something I was going to do and I
9 had forgotten it.
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11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What should go in there?
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13 MR. ATKINSON: I think it is tab 12A.
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15 MS. STEEL: Can you just remind me which page we are on?
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17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Page 19, the three dots in answer 13. You
18 say it should be tab 12A
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20 MR. ATKINSON: It should be tab 12A, I believe, of pink bundle
21 II, publication.
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23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: And then 32.
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25 MR. ATKINSON: And 33.
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27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: On page 26.
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29 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, my Lord, in relation to -----
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31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand the pleading of inference, and
32 it may be that the last two lines are really just
33 surplusage and could perfectly well be crossed out, or you
34 could have said that you are unable to state the precise
35 steps which would be a standard kind of answer to that kind
36 of request where you are asking the court to draw a general
37 inference from certain matters. You cannot say, and you do
38 not have to say, exactly what was done, but what you can
39 say that it is to be inferred from this, that or the other
40 that the other party was involved in participating in some
41 activity you complain about or other.
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43 MR. ATKINSON: Yes. In fact, when I was doing these, my Lord,
44 I actually considered not putting in that last bit for
45 precisely that reason. I think the only reason that I did
46 put it in was to alert the Defendants to the fact that they
47 have obligations on discovery in relation to the matter,
48 because if they do have any documents that are relevant to
49 the issue of their involvement or not, as the case may be,
50 then they are under an obligation, just as much as
51 McDonald's are, to give full discovery in relation to that.
52 So, in one sense it is surplusage but, in other another
53 way, it was meant just to push that point home.
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55 The authority for saying that they must give full
56 discovery, one case amongst many is, in fact, the case in
57 the Court of Appeal in this action, where really if one
58 summarises what the Court of Appeal is saying, if you have
59 a reasonable basis for putting something into a pleading as
60 a Plaintiff, then you are entitled to discovery from the
