Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 39
1 general -- complaints do not matter. Complaints are
2 irrelevant, whether they be complaints by NLRB in the
3 United States or complaints by customers in Bath. What
4 matters is whether the complaint is well-founded.
5
6 It is not relevant to prove by way of justification that a
7 number of customers complained about under-cooked
8 products. Customers will complain for all sorts of
9 reasons. As all of us know, even when we have not actually
10 run a restaurant, such complaints are very often
11 ill-founded, sometimes in good faith and sometimes in bad
12 faith.
13
14 What Mr. Richards says is that it is very rare that any
15 such complaint was found to be substantiated. If your
16 Lordship were to say to us: "Well, have a look at the
17 incident report forms for a particular period to give a
18 reasonable spread of time, and see how many of the
19 complaints were found to be substantiated", and if there is
20 a relevant incident report form for that period --
21 Mr. Morris has asked for I think the whole of 1994 -- why,
22 then I can see that one could either make a statement to
23 the effect that there were out of X number of complaints
24 one, two or three that could be substantiated or none, as
25 the case may be, or one could simply disclose those
26 incident report forms which showed that a complaint was
27 substantiated. That I could see. Once again, Mr. Morris
28 has cast his net as wide as the sea in the hope of picking
29 up something he does not know about.
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is your understanding the same as mine, that
32 the incident report forms only go through if there is some
33 substance to the report of under-cooking.
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: Not quite, I think. Mr. Atkinson will correct me
36 about this if I am wrong. I think what happens is that if
37 the management in the restaurant thinks that there may be
38 substance in it, if it is obviously not substantiated, if
39 the product is plainly not under-cooked or whatever it is,
40 then nothing happens and the matter is sorted out between
41 the management and the customer. But if the management has
42 a doubt about it, then what it does is to make an incident
43 report form and I believe send the offending or not
44 offending item of produce on to somebody higher up so that
45 they can make a dispassionate judgment -- is this right?
46
47 MR. ATKINSON: Yes.
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: -- whether or not the complaint is well-founded.
50 I think he says it in his statement, but I agree with your
51 Lordship that the statement is in this respect a
52 little -----
53
54 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Either way it might well be that there are
55 substantially less than 52 relevant forms if, indeed, they
56 are still in existence.
57
58 MR. RAMPTON: Incident report forms.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, in relation to under-cooked food.
