Day 312 - 11 Dec 96 - Page 12
1 doing it you might, in certain circumstances, end up paying
2 the crew member less than his legal entitlement and yet not
3 notice and he might not notice either.
4
5 MR. MORRIS: Yes, which is what happened of course. All I am
6 saying is that it will probably have been on a greater
7 scale, if you take into consideration Sundays.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: At the moment I am interested in it happening
10 at all rather than the scale of it.
11
12 MR. MORRIS: Yes. We think it probably happened at all stores
13 every week with at least one or two people, if not five or
14 six people.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: How are you going to go about it?
17
18 MR. MORRIS: Right. I am going to give a general overview about
19 some of the basic principles that have happened in this
20 case that we feel should be taken into consideration and
21 adopted.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: This is law now, is it?
24
25 MR. MORRIS: Yes, we are dealing with law now, general law,
26 general matters of law and procedure. Then Helen is going
27 to go into a little bit more detail on those general
28 matters, one or two of them, including European law. Then
29 I am going to refer to the NUM case. Then we are going to
30 go on to publication and the law to do with that. That is
31 our basic plan for today.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, hold on a minute. Very well.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: So in terms of what we have got ready, we are
36 pretty confident that will be finished by the end of
37 today. Then we will prepare for tomorrow.
38
39 I will hand a document over and I will go through it. We
40 are going to be making some fundamental points, but we feel
41 they should be listened to with an open mind. The first
42 thing is about the unprecendented nature and scope of the
43 case. As I said before, in many respects this case is
44 beyond precedent, to such an extent that there is an
45 overriding imperative for decisions to be made in order to
46 protect the public interest.
47
48 Actually, if I give a copy to the stenographers, it might
49 help them.
50
51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. (Handed).
52
53 MR. MORRIS: The first point to be borne in mind, of course, is
54 the vital public importance of the issues raised in this
55 case, which we would all agree on; secondly, the prominent
56 public profile of the Plaintiffs, it has been said that
57 they are possibly the most prominent Corporation in the
58 world in terms of their public image and recognition of
59 their symbol, maybe equally with Coca Cola and the Olympic
60 rings; three, the dominant position of the Plaintiffs along
