Day 255 - 23 May 96 - Page 55


     
     1        that all information about inquiry agents' investigations
     2        or observations is privileged if it is obtained and passed
     3        to the Plaintiffs' solicitors for the purpose of obtaining
     4        advice in relation to legal proceedings which are
     5        contemplated, a fortiori, if it is information after the
     6        30th September, 1990, being instigated.  It is helpful that
     7        you made it clear.  Perhaps it should have been clear to me
     8        before that you say it applies to communications between
     9        the client and the third party which do not go on to the
    10        solicitor.
    11
    12   MR. RAMPTON:  So it would appear.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But that is a relevant distinction here, is
    15        it, because in so far as the information, for instance, as
    16        to dates when Frances Tiller Davidson and Michelle Hooker
    17        and a third unidentified inquiry agent attended meetings
    18        and where the meetings were and what they may have observed
    19        at those meetings, in so far as that information comes to
    20        the client in the form of reports from one or other firm of
    21        inquiry agents, if those reports anyway are obtained also
    22        for the purposes of the solicitors and go to them, then the
    23        distinction may not be material.
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:  In the circumstances of this case, in fact, the
    26        primary receptacle for all the material was the
    27        solicitors.  So it probably does not matter.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, but there are some other communications,
    30        are there, to which your additional limb might be relevant,
    31        i.e. ones which did not go to the solicitor but go to the
    32        client?
    33
    34   MR. RAMPTON:  Not so far as I know, no.  I merely mention that
    35        in passing only to illustrate, perhaps, how little I knew
    36        about it; but, no, not so far as I know.  I say that
    37        because I am sometimes wrong, but not so far as I know.  My
    38        belief is that everything that is of any relevance that was
    39        communicated by the inquiry agents in relation to this
    40        case, or the contemplation of this case, went straight to
    41        the solicitors, who may or may not -- and again I am not
    42        certain -- have showed it to the clients.  I think in many
    43        cases they did not.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  So it would be covered by the first limb
    46        anyway, the communication with solicitors?
    47
    48   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes, indeed it would.
    49
    50   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  In other words, covered by -- there may be 
    51        need for further elaboration in argument -- but covered by 
    52        the parts you read from the White Book which refer to 
    53        documents but which, you say, refer to any other kind of
    54        communication of information?
    55
    56   MR. RAMPTON:  Certainly.  I mean, there are lots of authority
    57        about that.  I have no doubt about that.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But it is that rule which covers what you are
    60        saying the Defendants are not entitled to know?

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