Day 171 - 11 Oct 95 - Page 28
1 that I have it right. We are compressing the whole of
2 order 24 into these considerations.
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, if it came to the point where Mr. Morris
5 succeeded in persuading your Lordship -- and I must say
6 I certainly hope that he does not -- that we should give
7 discovery, I have told your Lordship the size of the
8 problem -- and I use "size" in its literal sense -- so far
9 as May 1994 is concerned, which is the one month I have
10 looked at. If Mr. Morris succeeds in persuading
11 your Lordship to do three months in 1994 and/or three
12 months in 1993, then I would say not only that was
13 unnecessary, but a primary argument whether I would not
14 produce them. I would simply say to the Defendants: "You
15 can go down to Bath and look at them for yourselves." I do
16 not know that your Lordship has any power to order me to
17 produce -----
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, unless I thought that was an unreasonable
20 stand.
21
22 MR. RAMPTON: With that volume of documentation -- and we are
23 talking about literally hundreds of pages of documents -- I
24 would, I am afraid, stand on my strict rights and say to
25 Mr. Morris or Ms. Steel, or both of them, they can go and
26 spend a week and a half at Bath reading them. I have
27 actually now got in chambers copies of the May documents.
28 As I say, that is about 90 pages or more.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If one took, say, August of 1994, we have then
31 moved into computerised -----
32
33 MR. RAMPTON: I have to tell your Lordship something about
34 that. Mr. Richards' answer, from memory, did not get it
35 quite right. The thing only became fully computerised in
36 the early part of this year. After May 1994, it was
37 something of a hybrid.
38
39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If I fixed on August 1994, let us say, in
40 addition to May 1994, because it seems to me that there
41 might be an element of unfairness in just ordering an
42 August month because you might very well want to say: "Let
43 us have a look at what an ordinary month was" -- it is even
44 known as "the silly season", so you want an ordinary month
45 as well -----
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: I am not sure that May in Bath is any more
48 ordinary than August, actually ---
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That may be so.
51
52 MR. RAMPTON: -- as it happens, because it is a very busy place
53 with lots of tourists. I am not at all sure that
54 Mr. Morris is right in thinking that May is a -----
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let us suppose for a moment, since you have
57 investigated May to some extent, that I had in mind August
58 of 1994 as well, or, if there was some difficulty in the
59 way of August 1994, I said August 1993, on the basis that
60 they are summer months and they are reasonably near, so
