Day 115 - 06 Apr 95 - Page 64
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I would like to do because, as I have
2 said before, it is wrong to approach, in my view, a case
3 such as this as if the only interests are those of
4 parties. There is a public interest as well, quite
5 independent of the rights and interests of the individual
6 parties. Although it is natural enough for you to be
7 concerned with your own interests, I have to keep an eye on
8 the public interest as well, saving time so far as it is
9 possible.
10
11 What I would like you to do is when you do come back at
12 2 o'clock on Wednesday 26th, bring with you a list of those
13 witnesses who have indicated they are going to come. Then
14 we will hear Mr. Nicholson's evidence-in-chief on
15 employment, not publication, and since you are not
16 cross-examining that week, hopefully we will have a bit of
17 time to talk about this further. What I suggest you do
18 over the break as well is try to make a list of what you
19 consider to be outstanding interlocutory matters.
20
21 Is there anything else we must deal with?
22
23 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the only thing is this. It is an
24 indication your Lordship gave sometime ago. I have given,
25 as your Lordship and the Defendants have seen, an estimate
26 of time I thought, a rough estimate, it might take in
27 examination-in-chief of the witnesses that I have scheduled
28 for May and the first part of June. Your Lordship did
29 indicate that it would be helpful if the Defendants would
30 give an indication of the time they think they will take in
31 cross-examination of those witnesses. That is not a
32 sterile exercise. It helps to this considerable extent
33 that it enables one to identify how much of the time during
34 those eight weeks or so, six weeks, is going to be free and
35 whether one should have that off for prep or whether, on
36 the contrary, one could fill it up with loose witnesses
37 from here and there of whom there are still quite a
38 number. I would urge the Defendants, through your
39 Lordship, that that was actually quite a valuable exercise.
40
41 MR. MORRIS: This was something I did comment on before, which
42 I was expecting from Mr. Rampton having spent a year in
43 court with him, the filling up with loose witnesses line.
44 When he was saying the point of giving substantial time to
45 those witnesses was to have a number of shorter breaks
46 which would deal with the stress and the preparation time
47 we need on the matters, and then us not to be under
48 pressure to fill up, I did say before that I thought the
49 loose witnesses should be dealt with before employment
50 starts, otherwise what is going to happen is that we are
51 going to be dealing with every issue concurrently as we
52 will with Mr. Beavers or Mr. Fairgrieve in the middle of
53 employment and we will not be able to prepare and organise
54 our paperwork to do all these matters at the same time. So
55 I would think it would be better to set, although I think
56 it would be useful if we could identify what we felt we
57 might need for cross-examination, it would be more useful
58 to plan a period of time when we deal with the loose
59 witnesses, so that we have time to prepare for that and
60 organise that.
