Day 270 - 28 Jun 96 - Page 58
1 same thing when he was questioned, so --
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you are not too concerned, leave it
4 there. The difficulty at the moment is before one can
5 really admit the statement under the Civil Evidence Act one
6 has got to know who is making the statement. There is
7 nothing terribly legal about that.
8
9 MR. MORRIS: Right. I do not know if an unsigned statement on
10 headed notepaper would be an acceptable statement. But the
11 fax details or the fax that arrived to me clearly from the
12 Burger King Corporation --
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You might be right about that, but I just do
15 not know who the witness is who is making what you want as
16 a Civil Evidence Act statement, and that seems pretty
17 fundamental. If you say you have got the evidence you
18 require by another route, then it does not matter anyway.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: I think it is 100 per cent clear anyway in the
21 statement of Sergio Quintana.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am going to hand that back. Unless there
24 is some development, I am not accepting that as a Civil
25 Evidence Act statement.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: Right. Can I also say that we have been sent a
28 draft statement from Neil Barnard, Dr. Neil Barnard, about
29 the links between diet and heart disease and cancer and the
30 related risk factor of the relationship, but we have not
31 had a chance to check it and we hope to serve that by the
32 beginning of next week basically.
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do that. The reason why it is important to
35 do it sooner rather than later is this; that there is going
36 to come a time, hopefully within the next 2 or 3 weeks,
37 when I say that is all the evidence I am going to hear,
38 whether oral or Civil Evidence Act, and the reason for that
39 is that one has got to have an end to the evidence at some
40 specified time. It is particularly important in a case
41 which has lasted as long as this, because there are
42 obviously things that are developing and changing all the
43 time, and if one was prepared to allow in any further
44 evidence of any kind beyond a certain date, in theory the
45 trial could be endless.
46
47 So even if there is evidence which might obviously help one
48 side or the other, which is very readily available, I am
49 going to have to be totally arbitrary about it and say that
50 is it now. So if you do have someone like Dr. Barnard, you
51 have got to get him in.
52
53 MR. MORRIS: Yes, that is why I was flagging him up now so
54 everyone would have maximum notice.
55
56 The other thing is that we have asked Susanna Hecht, and
57 she has indicated that she will be a witness on destruction
58 of rain forests in Brazil, to comment on the Goias River
59 Araguarian area.
60
