Day 174 - 17 Oct 95 - Page 57
1 MR. MORRIS: Yes. I mean, the point is Mr. Pearson is entitled
2 to explain what he means in his statement. If he brings up
3 anything new that there is no indication of, of course,
4 bearing in mind what you said before, that if I know
5 someone is going to bring up something new then I will put
6 it down on paper and let the other side know. But -- and
7 I know it is not, you know, the only approach that if their
8 witnesses have done it then our witnesses should be able to
9 do it, but if a witness of McDonald's has given an 80 page
10 verbatim examination-in-chief in the transcripts and they
11 only had a ten page statement, or something, then it does
12 indicate that people are expected, and indeed that is what
13 has happened in this case, people can expand upon the
14 specific things they have put in their statement.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It may be ----
17
18 MR. MORRIS: Unless they bring up new things.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It may be that I should have restricted that
21 when McDonald's were giving evidence, but the fact is that
22 it was not and the fact is that I saw no reason why you
23 should be prejudiced by that because your witnesses were
24 still to come and you have to accept, in my view, that we
25 are now in a different situation because I do not want a
26 lot of recalling of witnesses to deal with new matters.
27
28 Leave it there. I think you should -- what you have to do
29 is fill two days of next week, and you have to fill Monday
30 of the week after and you should try, in my view, to get
31 someone in addition to any overrun of Mr. Pearson for
32 Wednesday the 1st as well as people for Thursday the 2nd
33 and Friday the 3rd, because I can see that
34 cross-examination of Mr. Pearson might not be very long.
35
36 MR. MORRIS: If the Plaintiffs do not wish to question our
37 witnesses that is entirely their problem and they should
38 say so.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is not quite the same -----
41
42 MR. MORRIS: They said it would take half a day when they
43 responded to our letter. We said it would take a day,
44 examination-in-chief. The Plaintiffs basically said, you
45 know, whatever they said in their letter, and I am guided
46 by that.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Even if that were right, that only takes you
49 to the middle of Wednesday.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: I understand that, but any time that we can have
52 off during the day is helpful to us in preparing for the
53 following day.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I appreciate that, but I think you have to
56 ask for it and not just so arrange things that I am landed
57 with half a day off. If you say, "I have got Mr. X here
58 for Wednesday but I did not have a chance to talk to him"
59 -- I am not encouraging you to do this; if you get him to
60 come the first thing on Wednesday morning you may be able
