Day 068 - 16 Dec 94 - Page 65
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Very well.
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4 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the other thing is the position of
5 Dr. Gomez Gonzalez. It is evident to me that it is
6 extremely unlikely that the Defendants will finish
7 cross-examining him on Monday. He has moved his flight now
8 to Tuesday. If he does not leave on Tuesday, the
9 probability is or the possibility is that he will not get
10 another flight and he will not be able to join his family
11 for Christmas in Mexico; the reason for that being, of
12 course, that at this time of year flights are almost
13 impossible to get across the Atlantic or, indeed,
14 anywhere.
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16 My respectful suggestion would be that if the Defendants
17 cannot finish him tomorrow that he, like others, will have
18 to go into limbo to come back at some future date as soon
19 as possible, of course, in addition to which there are
20 other matters which I know your Lordship wants to deal with
21 before the end of this term.
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23 MS. STEEL: If it is possible for him to find a flight on
24 Wednesday, that would be helpful; if not, we will not
25 object to that.
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27 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am not going to offer that. He has
28 already, as it were, cut into his family holiday. I know
29 he volunteered to do that. I think, if I may say so,
30 I find Ms. Steel's suggestion both unreasonable and
31 unsatisfactory.
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33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You want to deal with other procedural
34 matters, do you not?
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36 MS. STEEL: Yes. I was not trying to, you know, force him to
37 stay here.
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39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There are two factors. There is, first,
40 whether he should be allowed to go back anyway on Tuesday.
41 The second is that there are matters which I thought you
42 wanted to decide. I am not going start them on Wednesday
43 morning or even late on Tuesday. If we could not get to
44 them before then, I would say, save for one or two specific
45 ones, that they ought to go over, but I am very anxious you
46 should deal with them. I am keen we should start to deal
47 with them on Tuesday, so we allow just a bit of slack so
48 far as timing is concerned.
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50 I appreciate you may not finish your cross-examination on
51 Monday and you may have to resume it some time next year.
52 It is quite apparent that Dr. Gomez Gonzalez spends quite a
53 lot of time flying around the world. It may be that he
54 will be asked to make an additional visit to the United
55 Kingdom at some time.
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57 I am not suggesting that you should willy-nilly cram what
58 you have got to do into Monday. If you can complete it on
59 Monday, everyone would be grateful. You will, no doubt,
60 yourselves be glad you have completed, but I am not saying
