Day 279 - 12 Jul 96 - Page 24
1 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, if that is position then there is no need
2 for any reading to be done at this stage.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, I appreciate that.
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: No. I was going to say something else, in
7 addition, then there is no need for a Civil Evidence Act
8 notice, if they are admissions against interest, they are
9 admissible anyway, if they are admissions by a party. And
10 your Lordship can look at them.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Quite frankly, it seems to me it probably
13 better if it is Civil Evidence Act, for the simple reason
14 it avoids an awful lot of argument about what is admissions
15 against interest and what is not.
16
17 MR. RAMPTON: I quite agree.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You did say it was a Civil Evidence Act? Not
20 that that matters.
21
22 MR. RAMPTON: No. Can I just add one thing about what Miss
23 Steel has just said? We disclosed the parts which your
24 Lordship said, looking at the article, were likely to be
25 the most relevant. The stuff that is not in there is stuff
26 which plainly is not relevant. We had a first go, if your
27 Lordship remembers, or Mr. Atkinson did, and your Lordship
28 said, "No, there is another bit of the article", I forget
29 which bit it was, "which might also be relevant on the
30 defendant's admissions." So we disclosed that part as
31 well. There is no reason to disclose any other part of
32 it.
33
34 I am only concerned that the proper context should be
35 before your Lordship, that is all.
36
37 MS. STEEL: That is my concern as well, and obviously I would
38 not ask you to look at the whole video. However, I do
39 think that if the plaintiffs want to rely on the context
40 they should disclose the whole video to myself and
41 Mr. Morris, and we can look at it and see whether there is
42 any comment that we might wish to make about whether or not
43 they have put the relevant context forward.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I see no reason to change my previous Ruling,
46 because it was on the basis of G.C. Capital, which included
47 in effect not only those parts which are relevant, or
48 arguably relevant, but the parts which were needed to make
49 sense of the parts which were relevant. I have got no
50 reason to doubt that the bits which have been disclosed do
51 not cover all of that. So, I am not going to revise my
52 earlier Ruling. Nothing has happened this morning which
53 would cause me to do that. The only question now is which,
54 if any, part should be read out.
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, as your Lordship knows, I am resistant to
57 this reading stuff, but I have a particular reason in this
58 particular instance. The actual video or the relevant
59 parts of it have already been played in court, and we
60 really to not want to sit here, I respectfully suggest, and
