Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 62
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2 MR. MORRIS: As we have shown today, some things he has said
3 have actually been incorrect.
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5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is completely wrong. I am supposed to
6 be a lawyer, too, you know, and the law is what the law is,
7 not what one side says it is.
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9 MR. MORRIS: Right.
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11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So I think that is completely off beam. What
12 you should have an opportunity to say is: Mr. Rampton may
13 be right about a lot of the law, but we would argue that he
14 is wrong about this or wrong about that, and in any event
15 he has not told you about this or that.
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17 MR. MORRIS: The trouble is that job is absolutely, you know,
18 monolithic for us to try to do that, because it is as much
19 as we can to follow the train of thought. We do not
20 generally get a transcript.
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22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It has been coming up, and I must direct that
23 you do it by such and such a time, and, quite frankly, it
24 has to be some time next week so far as the legal points
25 are concerned.
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27 MR. MORRIS: Right.
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29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The question is just when. You were talking
30 about doing it... I said today. Obviously, that is not
31 possible. Ms. Steel a few days ago said, can we have until
32 Monday, and I said that that was all right, and it clearly
33 is.
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35 MR. MORRIS: Yes. You know, I mean, the thing is we want to
36 finish the case by Christmas partly because, you know --
37 fantastic, we can relax a little bit after three or four
38 years of continuous pressure, but at the same time, I mean,
39 obviously, if we finish by the end of this term we have
40 very little time to play with. But these legal points are
41 very, very important because you can win a whole case on
42 the evidence and then lose on interpretation and legal
43 points, which cannot be in the interests of justice that we
44 have not had the same opportunities.
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46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: At the moment, you see, I do not know where
47 you are actually going to join issue with Mr. Rampton's
48 legal point. It is true that it is an adversarial system,
49 but in most of the cases where there has been a legal
50 argument with equally matched counsel on both sides in very
51 many of those cases when counsel actually stand up and
52 argue it you find there is no difference between them, or
53 you find that the difference between them covers about ten
54 per cent of the argument or the points.
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56 MR. MORRIS: I think if we had had legal aid we would have been
57 represented by a Q.C. and that would be the case, but
58 because one party clearly is not represented it is
59 inevitable that the other party feels more confident in
60 interpreting the law as favourably as possible to their
