Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 29
1 tab 10. There is a translation, if your Lordship should
2 need it, but perhaps for this purpose it is better to use
3 the French which is the penultimate paragraph on page 3 of
4 the French, because I mistrust both the translations that
5 I have given so far, one by the Defendants and one by us.
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is the penultimate paragraph on the third
8 page. We have a translation and it appears in the
9 penultimate paragraph of the translation.
10
11 MR. MORRIS: Is this the Lamti statement?
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is not clear to me is whether they are
16 witness statements because the French word which you used
17 -- I happily confess that to check I looked it up in a
18 French dictionary -- can mean testimony or evidence,
19 I suppose it could cover a witness statement, but it does
20 not necessarily mean that there was anything in writing.
21 In fact, whoever translated it seems to have had some doubt
22 because they just wrote put a question mark in brackets and
23 then wrote "evidence" in longhand. But in any event, it
24 was to the Gendarmerie.
25
26 MR. MORRIS: Yes, which is the police.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
29
30 MR. MORRIS: Yes. It is my belief that such statements were
31 part of the judicial investigation which one of the parties
32 would have been McDonald's France or -----
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: No. It was not McDonald's France. It was the
35 franchisee in Lyons, a company called Veepaix.
36
37 MR. MORRIS: It would have been relevant to McDonald's France
38 and McDonald's would certainly have had right of access to
39 documents involving legal disputes. But if they are saying
40 they do not have the documents, that is the question. If
41 they do have the documents, they should be disclosed.
42 I made a mistake with Chantal Villeneuve-Gallez; it was
43 actually Lamti.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do not worry about that. But the problem
46 which occurred to me is that they were not statements taken
47 by the franchisee, let alone McDonald's.
48
49 MR. MORRIS: But it would have been part of the judicial
50 investigation.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not know that, do I?
53
54 MR. MORRIS: That is what believe it states. I have not got it
55 in front of me. That is what I believe it states. There
56 is a reference to the investigation, I believe, in
57 Miss Gallez's statement at the end of her statement which
58 I have recently provided a translation for.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I rely partly on my own less than complete
