Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 32


     
     1   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   I do not want you to do it now.  I would
     2        like you to do your best to do it tomorrow.
     3
     4   MR. RAMPTON:   Can I say this; in preparing the ground for a
     5        typically evasive answer from an advocate, it does depend
     6        to a large extent on what your Lordship wishes me to deal
     7        with.  It is not done yet.  Unless people want to have
     8        bunches of notes, but I would not dream of giving the
     9        Defendants what I have done at the moment anyway, unless
    10        ordered to do so.
    11
    12        What I am hoping is that your Lordship will get, I am
    13        afraid, what will be quite a long document, set out
    14        actually, as it happens, in precisely the way that your
    15        Lordship indicated it would be helpful, with the
    16        references, for the most part, on the left-hand side of the
    17        page and propositions set out in the main body of the
    18        text.
    19
    20        What I would hope to be able to do, I hope it will be
    21        possible to have the whole thing typed by 22 November, let
    22        us say, is to give it to your Lordship, and then of course
    23        to the Defendants, with maybe a weekend and a day to read
    24        it, and then I would expect to find that your Lordship will
    25        raise certain things with me.
    26
    27        There will be certain points on which I have already made a
    28        note.  I shall willy-nilly want to have a go, if I may put
    29        it like that.  There will not be, as it happens, a very
    30        great deal by way of response to anything in the
    31        Defendants' case, because, for large part, whether I am
    32        right or wrong about it, for the large part we do not see
    33        the case in the same way as the Defendants do.
    34
    35        At any rate, certainly rainforest is one and animals is
    36        another, nutrition is probably going to be another, and so
    37        on.  We may be ----
    38
    39   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   What I would like you to do, on the basis
    40        that when you hand me whatever you have prepared, I take
    41        something like a day, and perhaps a Saturday and Sunday to
    42        read it through, then how long you expect to be on your
    43        feet.  I have got a growing idea of how long the things
    44        I might want to ask you about, which I might say are really
    45        in relation to matters of principle and what the meaning is
    46        and what effect it would be if I thought this was proved
    47        but that was not, and so on, matters of that kind, but I
    48        will have some idea of how long that will take and I can
    49        add it together and I can get a more reliable picture of
    50        how long your presentation will take. 
    51 
    52   MR. RAMPTON:   If your Lordship would give me -- I say this on 
    53        the basis of what is in writing now, there are certain
    54        sections which are obviously going to be much longer than
    55        others.  Nutrition, for obvious reasons, is going to be a
    56        long section.
    57
    58        If your Lordship was willing to give me the best part of 10
    59        days, that is to say, two weeks of court, I do not know how
    60        long your Lordship would want with me, as it were, as

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