Day 121 - 04 May 95 - Page 71
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, at some stage in the future, but not
3 tomorrow, a list may be made of -- I am not being facetious
4 if I say "dodgy documents", in the sense that it has
5 occurred to one side or the other they want to rely on them
6 and they may not have been strictly proved, so there may be
7 some objection from the other side, and it may be a
8 document of yours, it may be one of the surveys, for
9 instance, where you are not sure whether it is agreed that
10 should be admitted to be what is it is on the face of it,
11 or there is some argument about its admissibility. On
12 Mr. Rampton's side it may be it is just by way of a example
13 of computer print-out where he does not know whether he has
14 to go through the form to establish it as an admissible
15 document or not. But it would, as a start towards that
16 process, it would be helpful if, when you come in the
17 morning, you are able to say in relation to the documents
18 which Mr. Rampton has just enumerated: "Yes, we accept
19 those as accurate printouts", giving the information which
20 they purport to give, or: "No, we do not accept this one,
21 that one or the other one".
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23 MS. STEEL: Can I ask something. In terms of those documents,
24 can we accept that they are accurate in the sense they are
25 not forgeries, but without necessarily accepting that they
26 would be one hundred per cent accurate in terms of what
27 hours crew actually worked, because, I mean, a lot of our
28 witnesses have said things like: "Oh, if we were underage
29 then at 10 pm we clocked off and it was entered as a
30 bonus". So we might be prepared to accept they are
31 accurate as a minimum position, but not necessarily as an
32 maximum.
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34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You should come back in the morning and say
35 what you accept and what to what extent, and then the ball
36 will then be in Mr. Rampton's court as to whether he
37 can -----
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39 MR. RAMPTON: I can help about that as far as Ms. Steel question
40 is concerned, which is a natural question for somebody in
41 her position to ask. All that happens is if a
42 computer-generated document is admitted in evidence it
43 becomes prima facie evidence of the truth of its contents.
44 It is rebutable. If your Lordship thought at the end of
45 the case that, for one reason or another, the computer had
46 been led into error by humans, why, then the figures would
47 be discarded in favour of another -----
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49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What it means is that someone would pump that
50 information into it, and it would be prima facie evidence
51 that that is what actually happened, but it would not, in
52 any way, mean that it was irrebutable. If you called a
53 witness, whether it was a live witness, or a Civil Evidence
54 Act witness, if you said: "I am down there for 40 hours and
55 I worked 50" or "I am down there finishing at 10 pm, and I
56 worked on until 1 o'clock", it would be just a question of
57 whether one accepted that evidence, and if one thought that
58 was a trustworthy witness, then, to that extent, the
59 document would not be accepted as accurate evidence of what
60 it appeared to show.
