Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 11
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2 MR. MORRIS: Right.
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No application has been made to strike out.
5 So that is your platform. What I want to know is where you
6 say you go from there?
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8 MR. MORRIS: We are not making our closing speeches, but the
9 point is that, as far as we understand the law, we are
10 entitled to discovery on a pleading, McDonald's pleadings
11 accepted as being based upon reasonable belief.
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13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Tell me what discovery you say you are
14 entitled to?
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16 MR. MORRIS: I cannot remember. To be honest, I just assumed
17 that was -- what you said we had to do, was get over the
18 first stage of -- well, if I go to your -- I do not
19 understand what the objection was, because -----
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21 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I said I would be prepared to listen to any
22 future argument you made about this, and that is what I am
23 doing.
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25 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
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27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You can refer me to my previous ruling, by
28 all means, but I am quite prepared to start from scratch.
29 So I am giving you the opportunity to do that. What I want
30 to know is what documentation you say the Plaintiffs should
31 list and disclose, if they have it in their custody,
32 possession or control, which has not so far happened. It
33 is as simple as that. It is absolutely grass roots stuff.
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35 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Maybe I have misunderstood what I was going
36 to be asked to do. If I just say the way I saw the
37 situation, and maybe go away and reorganise it. But
38 I thought what happened is that you made a ruling, which we
39 referred to, I think it was yesterday -- the ruling was on
40 27th February -- and then, in response to that ruling, on
41 Day 98, from pages 65 to 69, I made a submission that we
42 would be entitled to documents -- I thought I was being
43 asked to justify a reasonable belief.
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45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What you are saying is that when I made the
46 ruling on 27th February, I was working on the statement
47 which you have referred to, which did not include
48 Franz Wertz -- who, in any event, may be a red herring so
49 far as this application is concerned -- and that what
50 I should have gone to is the pleading on page 16; not
51 bothered about what the evidence was or not concentrated on
52 that, but concentrated on the pleading which you have on
53 page 16 of tab 1.
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55 MR. MORRIS: I think the mix-up was because I put forward the
56 view -- as a start of my application for discovery,
57 probably -- that the matter was admitted, and then the
58 discussion developed over a period of days on: had the
59 matter been admitted by the Plaintiffs or had there been,
60 as the Plaintiffs considered, no evidence whatsoever?
