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

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