Day 118 - 01 May 95 - Page 83
1 should, because my reaction when she gave evidence was that
2 she dealt with a lot of topics and facts of which no
3 warning was given in her statement. You say yourself one
4 wants to get at the truth and therefore I am inclined to
5 allow McDonald's to call evidence on those matters of which
6 fair a full warning was not given in the statement. It is
7 not quite the same situation as you may have been in from
8 time to time where a McDonald's witness may have covered a
9 new area which was not in their statement, for the simple
10 reason by and large your witnesses are coming after the
11 McDonald's ones. So provided you have enough time to cope
12 with it when your relevant witness comes into the witness
13 box you can deal with that. You are not in an evidence in
14 rebuttal situation.
15
16 I will tell you what I am minded to do because the date you
17 have given is about a month from today, and in a case which
18 is lasting this long, if I say, "No 14, days rather than 28
19 days", it is just a judge trying to throw his weight around
20 without any big difference in the overall span of the
21 case. I have sympathy with the fact that it needs to be a
22 solicitor who is fully acquainted with the case who does
23 the proofing, and although it might be thought that you
24 have the services of a large firm of solicitors to assist
25 you the reality is that you really need someone who is au
26 fait with the conduct of case.
27
28 So what I would say is that it certainly should not be any
29 later -- and this is just an expression of view -- than the
30 date which you have given, and if it can be done in the
31 next couple of weeks or so rather than the next four weeks
32 or so I would greatly appreciate it, and I think it would
33 serve everyone's interest in the case.
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: We will take every due notice of those
36 observations of your Lordship and do it as soon as we
37 possibly can. It may mean Mrs. Brinley-Codd has to go to
38 Bristol rather than court 35 for a day or so, but perhaps
39 she would not mind that anyway.
40
41 My Lord, the other thing is this, and I raise this though
42 strictly speaking I am not sure I need to. As your
43 Lordship knows Mr. Beavers is coming back to give evidence
44 next Tuesday. He would, of course, we believe, be entitled
45 to read the transcripts of all the evidence that has been
46 given in the meantime just as if he had been sitting in
47 court. However, in order to make his task easier it has
48 been suggested that without anything being said to him,
49 whether orally or in writing, those parts of the transcript
50 where somebody has said: "Well you had better ask
51 Mr. Beavers about that", should be highlighted or flagged,
52 so he does not have to read the whole of every transcript.
53 I believe we would probably be entitled to do that anyway
54 but I did not want to do it without first asking whether
55 your Lordship thought it was an all right thing to do, so
56 long as nothing is written on the transcript or said to
57 him.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I can see no harm in that. The harm would be
60 if someone said: "Please see page 26 of the day 80", the
