Day 088 - 13 Feb 95 - Page 82
1 of immediate.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I cannot deal with that this evening.
4 I cannot sit too late this evening.
5
6 MR. MORRIS: No, I did not want to do it now, just to say that.
7 I think the last thing that I forgot to say about the
8 accident statistics was that, you may remember, the US ones
9 were based on compensation claims. They were not actual
10 general statistics about accidents; they were statistics
11 about ones that resulted in claims. I did forget to say I
12 do not believe they fulfilled the order that you made or
13 certainly enquiry that you made of the Plaintiffs to seek
14 out information statistics. There is also, if
15 I remember -- yes, that is the point I had to make on
16 that. I think those were the main things that were
17 outstanding that I forgot to bring up on Friday.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
20
21 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I will not deal with any of those now,
22 except to say that my recollection is, without looking it
23 up, that what your Lordship asked us to do was to get the
24 best accident statistics we could and your Lordship would
25 review them in due course and express a view whether they
26 enable you to make a sensible decision about that question.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. You may have mentioned it on Friday but
29 I think I raised it then. Do you remember I thought you
30 were going to get some further information on the basis of
31 the difficulty and in what way a sample of an area might be
32 done, if at all.
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. My Lord, we will do that. There is,
35 obviously, a logistical or practical problem. It is not
36 one that we will run away from if your Lordship says we
37 must face it. All I am wanting to do is to provide your
38 Lordship with a sensible basis for making a proper decision
39 in this case on the incidence and type of accidents,
40 perhaps, by a process of extrapolation overall.
41
42 I do not see any reason in anything your Lordship said so
43 far to give the Defendants chapter and verse on every
44 accident that has ever happened in America over the last 10
45 years.
46
47 MR. MORRIS: We were not asking for that.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, quite apart from anything else, it may be
50 in my decision -- I will say no more than that at the
51 moment -- I will want some further enquiry made as to how
52 one could get a test sample which might give some useful
53 indication of what is happening across the country.
54
55 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, perhaps that is something we can come
56 back to. My Lord, there are three things I should
57 mention: The first is when should Mr. Bowes return? At
58 the moment tomorrow is a blank day. At the moment we have
59 Dr. Pattison of Sun Valley coming on Wednesday. I am
60 hopeful, but again hopeful rather than expectant, that we
