Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 44


     
     1        just disposal of the case or saving of cost.  That was --
     2        I hope I have it right -- the drift of Mr. Rampton's
     3        argument.
     4
     5        What I am suggesting, and what I have in mind, is the
     6        possibility -- you took three years -- we do not need the
     7        turnover figures, if I were in your favour, we do not need
     8        them for every month.  What we need is figures at a given
     9        time, let us say, for the whole previous year, perhaps at
    10        the end of '88, '89 and '90; how many people there were in
    11        their employment at the end of a year or the end of spring
    12        quarter, and how many had been on the books, from which,
    13        according to the turnover calculation system, as
    14        I understand it, you would be able to work out the turnover
    15        and see if it accorded with the figures on that one sheet
    16        of paper.
    17
    18   MS. STEEL:  To be honest, I do not think it is a particularly
    19        onerous task.  It is a matter of asking the computer to
    20        print something out.  If there are two sets of figures for
    21        each month, it is only going to be twice the length of the
    22        document we have, which is less than a page.  Particularly
    23        when it is only for three years, it is going to come to
    24        some fraction of a page.  Even if the computer has to print
    25        out 10 pages, there is not really very much work involved
    26        in it.
    27
    28        There is absolutely no reason why the Plaintiffs should not
    29        do it.  They are the ones that produced the documents.
    30        There is no reason why we should not see the basis for how
    31        they worked those figures out.  Mr. Rampton actually said:
    32         "I keep an eye on the question of is discovery necessary,
    33        and if there is one where it is not necessary, just so
    34        Ms. Steel can see if she can make some criticisms."
    35
    36        That is the whole point of getting these documents.  We are
    37        entitled to criticise the evidence that the Plaintiffs put
    38        forward if it is inaccurate.  Unless we have the figures
    39        that those calculations are based on, we cannot do that.
    40
    41        When Mr. Kouchoukos gave evidence about the amount of CFCs
    42        and HCFCs that were used by the Company, we were able to
    43        criticise that because we had the figures that the totals
    44        were based upon.  If we had not had them, we would have not
    45        been able to criticise them and it would have gone
    46        unchallenged.  We have a right to have the information that
    47        we need in order to test whether the evidence that the
    48        Plaintiffs are putting in front of the court is correct or
    49        not.  Where they are making calculations and only putting
    50        the results of those calculations, they should have to give 
    51        the information that they used in order to make those 
    52        calculations, wherever we want to exercise the right to 
    53        check whether or not their calculations are correct.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am not saying I disagree with that --
    56        I will decide upon it -- but if, at the end of the day,
    57        I thought it was not justified, getting the extra figures,
    58        then what you could say is:  "Well, in that case put those
    59        figures out of your mind, because we are not prepared to
    60        accept them, and the Plaintiffs cannot set about proving

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