Day 171 - 11 Oct 95 - Page 28


     
     1        that I have it right.  We are compressing the whole of
     2        order 24 into these considerations.
     3
     4   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, if it came to the point where Mr. Morris
     5        succeeded in persuading your Lordship -- and I must say
     6        I certainly hope that he does not -- that we should give
     7        discovery, I have told your Lordship the size of the
     8        problem -- and I use "size" in its literal sense -- so far
     9        as May 1994 is concerned, which is the one month I have
    10        looked at.  If Mr. Morris succeeds in persuading
    11        your Lordship to do three months in 1994 and/or three
    12        months in 1993, then I would say not only that was
    13        unnecessary, but a primary argument whether I would not
    14        produce them.  I would simply say to the Defendants: "You
    15        can go down to Bath and look at them for yourselves."  I do
    16        not know that your Lordship has any power to order me to
    17        produce -----
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, unless I thought that was an unreasonable
    20        stand.
    21
    22   MR. RAMPTON:  With that volume of documentation -- and we are
    23        talking about literally hundreds of pages of documents -- I
    24        would, I am afraid, stand on my strict rights and say to
    25        Mr. Morris or Ms. Steel, or both of them, they can go and
    26        spend a week and a half at Bath reading them.  I have
    27        actually now got in chambers copies of the May documents.
    28        As I say, that is about 90 pages or more.
    29
    30   MR. JUSTICE BELL: If one took, say, August of 1994, we have then
    31        moved into computerised -----
    32
    33   MR. RAMPTON:  I have to tell your Lordship something about
    34        that.  Mr. Richards' answer, from memory, did not get it
    35        quite right.  The thing only became fully computerised in
    36        the early part of this year.  After May 1994, it was
    37        something of a hybrid.
    38
    39   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If I fixed on August 1994, let us say, in
    40        addition to May 1994, because it seems to me that there
    41        might be an element of unfairness in just ordering an
    42        August month because you might very well want to say: "Let
    43        us have a look at what an ordinary month was" -- it is even
    44        known as "the silly season", so you want an ordinary month
    45        as well -----
    46
    47   MR. RAMPTON:  I am not sure that May in Bath is any more
    48        ordinary than August, actually ---
    49
    50   MR. JUSTICE BELL: That may be so. 
    51 
    52   MR. RAMPTON: -- as it happens, because it is a very busy place 
    53        with lots of tourists.  I am not at all sure that
    54        Mr. Morris is right in thinking that May is a -----
    55
    56   MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let us suppose for a moment, since you have
    57        investigated May to some extent, that I had in mind August
    58        of 1994 as well, or, if there was some difficulty in the
    59        way of August 1994, I said August 1993, on the basis that
    60        they are summer months and they are reasonably near, so

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