Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 32


     
     1        on page 1, for a different reason.  This speaks for itself,
     2        the last sentence of the middle paragraph that
     3        your Lordship -----
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause a moment.
     6
     7   MR. RAMPTON:  Sorry.  (Pause)
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You were going to say about page 1?
    10
    11   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I just put my submission on page 2 in a
    12        slightly different way.  If this is anything passing
    13        between an Assistant Manager to a crew member, it is
    14        general chitchat, conversation -- call it what you like; it
    15        is not information which the Assistant Manager would have
    16        any duty (let alone authority) to convey to the crew
    17        member.  That is the necessary condition before it could
    18        ever be admissible.  On the first page -----
    19
    20   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause a moment, please, Mr. Rampton.
    21        Yes, page 1?
    22
    23   MR. RAMPTON:  Page 1, my Lord, is a slightly different point.
    24        Your Lordship drew attention to the last sentence in the
    25        third paragraph: "Managers draw the rotas up on a Thursday
    26        for the next week.  No one has a set time.  'We schedule
    27        for our needs not theirs.'"  If that were an answer to a
    28        crew member's genuine question, assuming (which I do not)
    29        that an Assistant Manager would be authorised or entitled
    30        to say this to a crew member, the answer would be: "We
    31        schedule for our needs, not yours."
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  Well, there is no suggestion that
    34        Ms. Lamb ever was a crew member at Holborn, in any event.
    35
    36   MR. RAMPTON:  No.  That is another point, which I am grateful to
    37        your Lordship for.  Absolutely not.  So, in fact, the crew
    38        member/Assistant Manager relationship could only ever arise
    39        in relation to the Lynval interview.  Although I read it
    40        twice, with great difficulty, I am bound to say I see
    41        nothing in that of what one might call genuine answers to
    42        genuine questions by a crew member as to her own working
    43        conditions.  It is quite clearly a biographical and, in
    44        some parts, suppositious account by an Assistant Manager of
    45        his own experiences and views.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you wish to say anything more about
    48        Joanna Blackett?
    49
    50   MR. RAMPTON:  No, I do not.  At the moment, I do not.  It would 
    51        be, on the face of it -- can I put it this way -- it would 
    52        be up to me, I believe, to adduce evidence to show that, in 
    53        fact, she had neither express nor implied authority within
    54        the scope of her ordinary duties to make statements of this
    55        kind.  I have not done that; and so I am not in a
    56        position -- at the moment at least, I do not believe -- to
    57        object to it because, on the face of it, your Lordship is
    58        likely to hold, I would have said, subject always to what
    59        Ms. Lamb might actually say about how this conversation
    60        came about, that this was a perfectly open inquiry by her

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