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.

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