Day 202 - 11 Jan 96 - Page 34
1 the rest of this week and the beginning of the next, and
2 you say that that ended up with Mr. Coton doing what he
3 did, and you say, for good measure, it ended up with
4 Mr. Davis showing and teaching Mr. Coton how to do it.
5
6 That is what you are aiming at, and the detail of it, of
7 things like this, I do not think is actually going to help
8 me at the end of the day.
9
10 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I agree and I think it is arguable whether any
11 of the Plaintiffs' witnesses are contributing at all on the
12 issues on this subject -----
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause there for the moment. Whether
15 they contribute at the end of the day is a matter for me to
16 decide on the evidence. I ruled, and I have no reservation
17 about having ruled it, that since Mr. Coton's evidence did
18 not come into the matter until October of last year -- by
19 evidence I mean his statement -- McDonald's are entitled to
20 recall witnesses like Mr. Atherton and call some fresh
21 witnesses like Mr. Skehel; but that does not mean that one
22 has to test every detail and see what else one can get out
23 of the evidence which might relate to some secondary
24 consideration. We have to keep our eye on the ball, which
25 I hope I have fairly summarised a moment or two ago.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Really what I am doing is protecting
28 Mr. Coton, who has been attacked and accused of all kinds
29 of -----
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I know. By all means do that to some extent
32 but do not forget that under lining the wrongness of what
33 Mr. Coton did is part of your case.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I understand that.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Even if, at the end of the day, I were to
38 find that Mr. Davis was not part of this -- and I do not
39 find it an easy matter to decide, and I have not begun to
40 make up my mind about it -- you can still say Mr. Coton was
41 put into the box. So, where that takes me, we will have to
42 see. But do not forget, although there is always a
43 temptation to protect your own witness, Mr. Coton's
44 failures are part of your case.
45
46 MR. MORRIS: I understand that. The Plaintiffs are just trying
47 to isolate one or two of the problems that we have
48 identified from the Colchester store.
49
50 (To the witness) On that subject, on this page, the final
51 line about the profitability is that the test for you as a
52 Supervisor is to have five stores with sound financial
53 control, and not just three. To you, financial control
54 means achieving the budget profit percentage targets that
55 are set for that store?
56 A. No.
57
58 Q. Is that not what it says there?
59 A. No, that is not what I would have meant by financial
60 control. The targets are set, you know, at the end of the
