Day 263 - 14 Jun 96 - Page 26


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, can I try and shorten matters?  Perhaps
     3        I can deal with this last question, the post-September
     4        question, first.  This arises because an application has
     5        been made for sight of documents which are privileged.  If
     6        there were any doubt (which I do not accept there is any
     7        doubt) whether the notes or reports submitted to
     8        Mrs. Brinley-Codd before issue of writ were privileged,
     9        there surely cannot be any doubt about evidence gathered by
    10        the inquiry agents after the writ was issued.
    11
    12        It may very well be -- I do not know, I would have to
    13        look -- that reports submitted after issue of the writ
    14        contain material which is relevant in a general sense to
    15        issues in the action.  In fact, that may very well be.  The
    16        argument before your Lordship is whether, by submitting
    17        evidence in relation to the pre-writ period, one meeting a
    18        week after the writ, evidence in relation to the pre-writ
    19        period, in relation to the question "Did the Defendants
    20        publish the words complained of", and to the further
    21        question which is raised by way of defence, "Did the
    22        Plaintiffs consent to those publications", then I assert
    23        what I asserted yesterday, that the matters covered in the
    24        post-writ reports are not relevant to either of those
    25        questions and they are, therefore, irrelevant to the
    26        question of waiver, which is the question your Lordship has
    27        principally to decide, if you should come to the conclusion
    28        that the reports or the notes are, in principle, the
    29        subject of privilege.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It may be that you do not have to concern
    32        yourself about this, if I were to come to the view that the
    33        notes and reports were privileged and that there had been
    34        no waiver about the transaction in respect of the waiver
    35        bit was a particular meeting or a particular event.  But if
    36        we put privilege completely on one side for a moment,
    37        because you started off by arguing that they were not
    38        relevant, anyway.
    39
    40   MR. RAMPTON:  I specified the questions to which I said that
    41        they were irrelevant.  If your Lordship remembered,
    42        I proposed, I think it was four; I cannot remember what
    43        they were now; I could look back at the transcript.  But
    44        I think I proposed four questions relating to the issue of
    45        publication and to the issue of consent.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  As I saw it, and as I still see it, the question
    50        of waiver -- and I do not resile from this one bit -- is 
    51        confined to the issues raised by those four questions, 
    52        unless it be proposed that by waiving a privilege ----- 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am not at all on, at the moment, privilege
    55        or waiver.
    56
    57   MR. RAMPTON:  I understand that.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is just that if I say they are not
    60        relevant anyway, I need not even concern myself with that.

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