Day 171 - 11 Oct 95 - Page 29


     
     1        that people might have some recollection -----
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  I have no difficulty in principle.  My fear of
     4        this is simply -- if I can deal with the question of
     5        nearness at the same time -- one knows what happens; one
     6        has a single store, and we have two months, perhaps in the
     7        same year, perhaps in different years, for that single
     8        store out of however many.  If one has in front of one, let
     9        us say, 200 sheets of paper with I do not know how many
    10        names on them, they are terribly hard work, because one has
    11        to work through each day, working out when the hours are
    12        worked and how much at the end of the week or end of the
    13        month the person had worked, and so on and so forth.  They
    14        are very hard work.  We are literally going to spend, if
    15        I know my Defendants -- and I believe that I do -- days and
    16        days and days, in effect, snooping through the documents
    17        for a case which presently is not pleaded.  I mind less,
    18        I think, about disclosing 200 pages of document.  What I do
    19        mind about is being asked -- and this is a slightly
    20        separate point -- to disclose the names of people who are
    21        not only not witnesses in the case, but who have not even
    22        been mentioned, and who certainly are not coming to court
    23        to say that what Mr. Logan says is perfectly right or: "Yes
    24        I did work for 40 hours in that week, but I wanted 45 and
    25        the rotten manager would not give me 45, because I was
    26        going on holiday and I needed the money", or whatever the
    27        explanation might be.
    28
    29        One does have, in my respectful submission, to look -- and
    30        I have said this before -- at what the reward is for all
    31        this work to which we are asked to devote ourselves and the
    32        amount of time and money we have to spend in court while
    33        the Defendants hack through little bits of detail.  One
    34        asks oneself what comes out of it at the end:  a conclusion
    35        that Mr. So and So or Miss So and So did so many hours in a
    36        week.  I do ask the question -- I know it is a bit rude --
    37        so what?
    38
    39        If a youth of 23 -- take Mr. Dixon, for example, who is on
    40        the sheet and who I propose to disclose -- and I know I am
    41        giving evidence, but your Lordship will see it in due
    42        course -- one week where he works 45 hours, I think, one
    43        week.  He is a 23 year old student.  What conclusion is
    44        your Lordship going to draw from that?
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Why not have the courage of your convictions
    47        about that?
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  I do have the courage of them, but if I am to, as
    50        it were, put my courage to the sticking place, then I have 
    51        to make a massive discovery and have to spend hours in 
    52        court while we hack through each name in turn. 
    53
    54        So far as the named people are concerned, I do not have a
    55        problem.
    56
    57   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The situation, you would say, is this:  if
    58        someone is disclosed by the documentation to have worked 45
    59        hours a week rather than 39, I have absolutely no reason to
    60        assume that that is against their will, it is voluntary;

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