Day 255 - 23 May 96 - Page 59
1 spent what is now about 20 minutes on this is so that we do
2 not have a situation where you come back, Mr. Rampton
3 raises the objection and you say, "Well, we did not
4 understand the way it was going to be put; we have not had
5 sufficient warning; we are not legally represented; we need
6 to go away and get legal advice", because with the
7 witnesses, one in the witness box, a question of that
8 witness having raised the legal argument which I have got
9 to decide and others, hopefully, queuing up outside court
10 to give their evidence, I am not going to say, "Right,
11 I will give you time to go and get legal advice".
12
13 I have canvassed these matters so that you can try and get
14 your mind round the potential problem. If you choose,
15 before the beginning of the week in question where we have
16 Miss Pearce followed by publication witnesses, to get some
17 legal advice about it, then you can try to do so.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: Can I clarify one thing then? The waiver on any
20 relevant material -- any material that is relevant to the
21 evidence of the four that have been disclosed, you
22 are-----
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Relevance has nothing to do with it.
25
26 MR. MORRIS: Any material that is relevant to any issue in the
27 case that is related to those four witnesses is now --
28 there is no privilege on -----
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, that is not so.
31
32 MR. MORRIS: The waiver of the privilege for those four -----
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am sorry to interrupt because I do not
35 like to do it, but I do beg Mr. Morris to take away the
36 references which we have given and to read them. The bits
37 in Style and Hollander really are very instructive. They
38 are written very clearly. All these questions are answered
39 in the course of that week and it really is not very
40 helpful to have this argument now.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Can we just summarise what the situation is so far
43 as the waiver of the privilege of those four is?
44
45 MR. RAMPTON: No, because that is to ask your Lordship to make a
46 ruling and then I shall have to set forth -- perhaps it
47 will take me quarter of an hour -- of what I conceive to be
48 the principles of waiver.
49
50 MS. STEEL: The point is, I think you said something the other
51 day about you were waiving privilege.
52
53 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. If one deploys a piece of evidence, then one
54 waives the privilege in documents associated with or
55 connected with the transaction which that evidence
56 describes. Now, that is put very succinctly. I have tried
57 to borrow the words verbatim from the judgment of
58 Mr. Justice Hobhouse in a case in 1984 -- I think it is the
59 General Accident Fire and Life Assurance; it is on the
60 list. That is not, as it appears, nearly so extensive a
