Day 142 - 26 Jun 95 - Page 66
1 MR. RAMPTON: For next week? Of this week?
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, next week.
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: That is what I thought your Lordship said.
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. What that will mean is, if Mr. Morris
8 is correct in his estimate, there would be whatever
9 remained of Thursday and Friday for him and Ms. Steel to do
10 some extra preparation, having the day before on Wednesday
11 provided a list of the topics which they consider to be
12 outstanding, from which one could tell which ones they
13 wanted to deal with now and which are postponed until
14 later. They would have Friday as well as any time they
15 chose to put to it over the weekend for further
16 preparation.
17
18 If we finished in good time on Thursday, I would give you
19 the opportunity to say what you wanted to say on any of
20 these topics, but then go away for the Friday, as it were,
21 before calling on Ms. Steel or Mr. Morris to reply to what
22 you have said, so that they could think about what you had
23 said in support of your applications over those three days.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, of course, I would be willing to do
26 that. I could say quite a lot now if there were time,
27 there is not. I would only say this, depending on how much
28 time I had, I would not want to feel under pressure that I
29 had to finish on Thursday.
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, no. What it seemed to me is that there
32 would be no point in coming back on Friday just for you to
33 finish, as it were. You could resume on the Monday
34 morning. I would allow the Friday as a preparation in
35 relation to submissions. I would like you to say by then,
36 if this schedule has any appeal at all, who you would
37 propose to call on the Thursday and the Friday, so that
38 when Ms. Steel and Mr. Morris go away on Thursday evening
39 they know they have got procedural matters to prepare for
40 and whatever the named witnesses are.
41
42 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, we will do that. Your Lordship did
43 kindly say that I need not be here on Friday.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: That makes no difference. I am not suggesting the
48 court should not sit.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I had forgotten it was as close as that.
51 What I suggest you do is schedule your witnesses so that
52 you, Mr. Atkinson and Mrs. Brinley-Codd are content that
53 Mr. Atkinson holds the fort on Friday.
54
55 MR. RAMPTON: That is what I had in mind. One other thing
56 before I sit down, if I may respectively say so, that plan
57 certainly suits our way of thinking. If we are going to
58 start the interlocutories on Monday 3rd, and there is going
59 to be a skeleton argument about some aspect of the
60 nutrition topic -- what that could relate to, I cannot
