Day 312 - 11 Dec 96 - Page 08
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2 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, now that has the effect if I am not
3 allowed or if your Lordship is not allowed to make a
4 discount for any vindicatory effect of your judgment so far
5 as the Plaintiffs are concerned, and if for, as we submit,
6 at any rate the major part of the damage the Defendants are
7 jointly liable, and if I have to have two awards, it does
8 mean that the bracket which I originally gave I think in
9 paragraph 6 -----
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11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The 40,000 to 60,000, was it?
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13 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, is no longer right. First, because that
14 allowed for the discount in relation to a favourable
15 judgment, that goes, and also plainly each Plaintiff has to
16 be separately vindicated and compensated. It rather looks
17 to us, therefore, as though one could leave that bracket in
18 place but say that that is the bracket for each Plaintiff
19 separately, taking those two separate considerations into
20 account.
21
22 I say that in the light of two authorities which we have
23 dug out, which are unreported cases and were referred to in
24 the Elton John case. One is called Gorman v Mudd, that was
25 decided in the Court of Appeal on 15th October 1992, and
26 the other one was called Smith v Houston, decided in the
27 Court of Appeal on 14th December 1993.
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29 MR. MORRIS: Sorry, have we got copies?
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31 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, I am going to hand in copies. The references
32 to those cases, Elton John, whose reference is 1996, 3 WLR
33 593, and the reference to Gorman v Mudd is on page 609 from
34 letters A to E.
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36 MR. MORRIS: Sorry, are we referring to this document?
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38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. One of the leading cases on damages,, as
39 you are probably aware anyway by now, is a case called John
40 v Mirror Group Newspapers which said that counsel or for
41 that matter litigants in person can put suggested figures
42 for damages before the jury or the judge, and it is
43 legitimate to take some account of personal injury damages,
44 just a measure of damages which may be in one's mind
45 against them. Mr. Rampton is saying that the case of
46 Gorman v Mudd, which you have just been I think given a
47 transcript of in the Court of Appeal, was referred to at
48 page 609, A to E, of the judgment of the court in John.
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50 MR. RAMPTON: The other one, my Lord, Houston v Smith, actually
51 Smith was the Plaintiff, the other reference in John is at
52 610, letters C to F. In both those cases the jury had
53 awarded a sum of a £150,000 to the Plaintiffs. In both
54 those cases the Court of Appeal reduced that award under
55 their new powers under the Supreme Court Act, to £50,000 in
56 each case. In both those cases there had been a plea of
57 justification which had been unsuccessfully persisted with
58 at trial. In both those cases there was but, in essence,
59 one allegation. In both those cases the publication was
60 very limited. In Gorman v Mudd there was a libel published
