Day 121 - 04 May 95 - Page 72
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2 MS. STEEL: If there was not any direct rebuttal in the sense of
3 actually calling one of the people who was named on the
4 sheets, we just wanted to continue the general point of
5 where we have got witnesses -----
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7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What the situation would be is you would be
8 arguing at the end of the day, well, there we have got
9 prima facie evidence of that, but on this occasion and that
10 occasion, not at this store and not the people listed on
11 the document, we ask you to find that the practice has been
12 going on of clocking people out at 10 or 12 and paying them
13 a bonus because they have actually worked on later, and
14 therefore look at that document with a critical eye and
15 indeed do not accept it, do not attach weight to it as
16 evidence, then that is all part of the argument at the end
17 of the day, and I will have to make up my mind about it if
18 I think it is a relevant issue. But the first thing is you
19 have to decide whether you accept the document in question
20 as an admissible document saying what it purports to say.
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22 MR. MORRIS: What I am trying to clarify is, we can accept it as
23 an accurate representation of what was put in by a human
24 being. It does not necessarily mean we accept what the
25 human being did was accurate, based upon information.
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27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You may not be accepting that, you will be
28 accepting it is some evidence that X worked so many hours
29 in that week.
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31 MS. STEEL: At least.
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33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, no in that fortnight that X worked,
34 say, 89.12 hours in that fortnight, you may say because of
35 other evidence in the case you ask me to attach no weight
36 to that because you have got other evidence in the case
37 which casts doubt on it being accurate. I mean, I am
38 hesitant about going further because, on the one hand, it
39 would obviously be convenient if you accepted it, to that
40 extent, but on the other hand I must not persuade you to
41 accept something you have reservations about. As I have
42 said, if you do not, the procedures which have to be
43 followed under this, to give it the status which Mr.
44 Rampton wants, are fairly simple. If my recollection is
45 right, all he has to do is call some witness about the
46 procedure which was followed.
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48 MR. RAMPTON: I may not even have to do that, it is a
49 certificate.
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51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: All you have to do is to produce your
52 certificate to that effect.
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54 MR. RAMPTON: What I was going to say was, again I am trying to
55 be helpful, there is really there no point in the
56 Defendants objecting to these documents for the sake of
57 it -- except, of course, it costs time and money, which,
58 I do not know -- because, as your Lordship has just said,
59 the mechanism for establishing the documents as prima facie
60 evidence is a simple one. Second, and I want to make this
