Day 147 - 04 Jul 95 - Page 30


     
     1        first instance and makes no provision for such a provision
     2        from public funds, as does rule 5; and that, so far as your
     3        Lordship's power in the matter under that rule is
     4        concerned, is the end of the matter.
     5
     6        My Lord, there are two things which concern me about this.
     7        The first is that your Lordship might even contemplate
     8        refusing to have the transcript or CaseView, if we should
     9        think that because the Defendants have failed to give the
    10        undertaking for which we have asked for, and to which
    11        I will return (which is the second thing I want to address
    12        just now), if your Lordship should refuse to have either
    13        the transcript or CaseView -- and I put this as
    14        respectfully as I can -- from some misguided impression
    15        that that was fairer to the Defendants, in our respectful
    16        submission, and I hope that I am speaking to the converted,
    17        that would be, in fact, to quite the contrary effect.
    18
    19        Above all, it is desirable that your Lordship should have
    20        all the available resources to reach the correct decision
    21        in this case.  Certainly, CaseView is probably the last of
    22        those, in the sense that judges who spent years at the Bar
    23        know very well how to take notes.  CaseView is a help, but
    24        it is nothing like -- at least I do not know find it
    25        anything like as much assistance as the transcripts.
    26
    27        I say that this without any sense of humbug.  It is in the
    28        Defendants' interests that your Lordship should have both
    29        CaseView and the transcripts, because if it should turn out
    30        at the end of the day that your Lordship has made what we
    31        perceive to be a mistake in favour of the Defendants, then
    32        the Defendants would be exposed on any subsequent appeal
    33        they thought it right to make.
    34
    35        We are, therefore, very anxious that your Lordship should
    36        have no thought of refusing to have those resources to make
    37        what we hope and believe will be the correct decision in
    38        this case.  It is a long case.  It is not, perhaps in some
    39        senses, a very difficult case, but it is a long case and
    40        there has been an awful lot of evidence.
    41
    42        The misfortune of being a judge, I suppose -- and I am not
    43        one -- is the principal burden of seeing at the end of the
    44        case that all the evidence is properly reviewed, summarised
    45        and adjudicated upon.  As the judge, he gets what help he
    46        can from the parties, but he, above all, needs to have as
    47        full a record as may possibly be available in a case of
    48        this kind.  Therefore, in order to do justice between the
    49        parties, your Lordship is, in fact, the last person who
    50        should be deprived of the transcripts or of CaseView. 
    51 
    52        It does no injustice whatever to the Defendants that 
    53        your Lordship should have materials, in that sense, which
    54        are unavailable to them.  The provision, as your Lordship
    55        will observe, of transcripts of what has been said in court
    56        is quite distinct from the question of whether one party is
    57        allowed to show the judge a document, as Ms. Steel showed
    58        the document, for example, to your Lordship, without the
    59        other side seeing it.  It is nothing to the same point at
    60        all.

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