Day 043 - 01 Nov 94 - Page 78
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do your best with the estimates of
3 cross-examination. As I made clear this morning -- just
4 listen for a moment -- the inconvenience of a witness and
5 the commercial convenience of a party cannot decide the
6 question as to whether one carries on with one particular
7 witness or another. In fairness (and it works on both
8 sides) if we can meet the convenience of the witness and
9 the party, without disrupting the trial, we attempt to do
10 so.
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12 What I would like to do, if we can, is to go on with
13 Mr. Hawkes in the morning and see how we go on
14 cross-examination on any new documentation, but somehow or
15 other leave sufficient time, whether or not his
16 cross-examination is completed and whether or not we can
17 proceed to re-examination, to get Mr. Green finished by
18 Friday afternoon. That is why I want to know what sort of
19 time is likely to be taken in cross-examination.
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21 MS. STEEL: Of Mr. Green?
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23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Both Mr. Hawkes and Mr. Green. You may find
24 that you get so far with Mr. Hawkes and, not being partisan
25 about it, I think it is in your interests to break off
26 cross-examination there, so he can give some answers one
27 way or another. Then when you call Miss Dibb -- this is
28 always assuming that the questions and answers are
29 admissible -- you know what to ask her about particularly,
30 how far you need to go and what is in issue and what is
31 not.
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33 MS. STEEL: I think we do not see what the problem is with
34 Mr. Hawkes but, given that he has been interrupted, we are
35 not really sure how long he will take or how long we will
36 be with Mr. Green, it may just be safer to carry on with
37 Mr. Green so that we do not get pressured to cut short the
38 cross-examination of him so he can go back to America.
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40 But we would like to say, generally, that this does keep
41 cropping up. We have said there ought to be more space,
42 particularly where witnesses have to go back to America, so
43 that we do not have these problems. It does make life
44 difficult for us if we have to have interruptions during
45 cross-examination to fit another witness in. But, as the
46 interruption has already taken place, we are prepared to
47 carry on with Mr. Green to make life easier.
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49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: In that case what we will do is we will carry
50 on with Mr. Green. We will finish him. We will then,
51 unless there is any good reason for not doing so, go back
52 to Mr. Hawkes.
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54 Another aspect which has just occurred to me is Mr. Hawkes'
55 enquiries may, for all I know, bring to light other
56 documents which are thought to be relevant and, therefore,
57 should be disclosed. If that is so, it is essential that
58 sufficient copies are made and they are disclosed to you
59 before you go back to your cross-examination. I say it is
60 essential. You may say, well, you are not concerned about
