Day 070 - 20 Dec 94 - Page 25
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there any sample which could be done? The
3 statistics were done by states, I seem to remember, in the
4 United States.
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. Quite honestly, it is appallingly complex.
7 It took me five minutes to understand what exactly goes
8 on. It is done by states. Only 30 per cent of the
9 restaurants in America are company owned, anyway. The
10 franchisees are left to their own devices, what they do
11 about this, so far as the states will allow them to do
12 that. So one is only ever going to see figures for
13 30 per cent.
14
15 There is a database which contains, by one route or
16 another, the numbers of all accidents known about, but that
17 includes everything from the stubbed toe up to serious
18 injury.
19
20 The only way one could get a sensible analysis -- I think
21 there are some 5,000 per year in that unclassified raft of
22 figures -- the only way, I am told, that one could sort out
23 the serious from the trivial, or significant from the
24 trivial, is for somebody to sit down and write a programme
25 and review every single one of these pieces of
26 information. I am told that would take, for a single year,
27 420 hours, which I make six weeks at ten hours a day.
28
29 What we can do is produce the numbers unclassified by
30 gravity.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think that would help. Of course, the
33 United Kingdom may be no model at all for the
34 United States, but if there were equivalent figures for
35 total, if they are available for this country, are they, or
36 are there just the RIDDOR ones?
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: It is only the RIDDOR ones which are available in
39 this country, and those are the ones which arguably -----
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: How many restaurants are in the States,
42 again? I have been told more than once.
43
44 MR. RAMPTON: I cannot remember. Something like 10,000,
45 70 per cent of which are franchised.
46
47 We will do our very best to get a sensible sample for
48 your Lordship, but it would be unsafe, obviously, to base
49 too much of a firm conclusion on a sample. What your
50 Lordship did say was that you would not expect us to spend,
51 as it were, the sort of time and effort which I have
52 suggested is going to be necessary. I will get that
53 verified for what are perhaps not the real issues in the
54 case.
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, Mr. Morris?
57
58 MR. MORRIS: I do not know how Mr. Rampton thinks it is not one
59 of the leading issues in the case. It is actually
60 specified in the factsheet. But conditions in the catering
