Day 270 - 28 Jun 96 - Page 58


     
     1        same thing when he was questioned, so --
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If you are not too concerned, leave it
     4        there.  The difficulty at the moment is before one can
     5        really admit the statement under the Civil Evidence Act one
     6        has got to know who is making the statement.  There is
     7        nothing terribly legal about that.
     8
     9   MR. MORRIS:  Right.  I do not know if an unsigned statement on
    10        headed notepaper would be an acceptable statement.  But the
    11        fax details or the fax that arrived to me clearly from the
    12        Burger King Corporation --
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You might be right about that, but I just do
    15        not know who the witness is who is making what you want as
    16        a Civil Evidence Act statement, and that seems pretty
    17        fundamental.  If you say you have got the evidence you
    18        require by another route, then it does not matter anyway.
    19
    20   MR. MORRIS:  I think it is 100 per cent clear anyway in the
    21        statement of Sergio Quintana.
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am going to hand that back.  Unless there
    24        is some development, I am not accepting that as a Civil
    25        Evidence Act statement.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:  Right.  Can I also say that we have been sent a
    28        draft statement from Neil Barnard, Dr. Neil Barnard, about
    29        the links between diet and heart disease and cancer and the
    30        related risk factor of the relationship, but we have not
    31        had a chance to check it and we hope to serve that by the
    32        beginning of next week basically.
    33
    34   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do that.  The reason why it is important to
    35        do it sooner rather than later is this; that there is going
    36        to come a time, hopefully within the next 2 or 3 weeks,
    37        when I say that is all the evidence I am going to hear,
    38        whether oral or Civil Evidence Act, and the reason for that
    39        is that one has got to have an end to the evidence at some
    40        specified time.  It is particularly important in a case
    41        which has lasted as long as this, because there are
    42        obviously things that are developing and changing all the
    43        time, and if one was prepared to allow in any further
    44        evidence of any kind beyond a certain date, in theory the
    45        trial could be endless.
    46
    47        So even if there is evidence which might obviously help one
    48        side or the other, which is very readily available, I am
    49        going to have to be totally arbitrary about it and say that
    50        is it now.  So if you do have someone like Dr. Barnard, you 
    51        have got to get him in. 
    52 
    53   MR. MORRIS:  Yes, that is why I was flagging him up now so
    54        everyone would have maximum notice.
    55
    56        The other thing is that we have asked Susanna Hecht, and
    57        she has indicated that she will be a witness on destruction
    58        of rain forests in Brazil, to comment on the Goias River
    59        Araguarian area.
    60

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