Day 313 - 13 Dec 96 - Page 28
1 gave the Defendants leave to respond in relation to the
2 counterclaim, and on the facts as well as the law. The
3 only other permission that the Defendants have is to put in
4 transcript references, or document references, in writing
5 before noon on 18th December and to make legal
6 submissions. Mr. Morris has no right, as I have understood
7 your Lordship's ruling, to address your Lordship on
8 anything to do with the rest of the facts of the case.
9
10 MR. MORRIS: This is a legal submission.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: They must be legal.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I understand that.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I said to Ms. Steel when she wanted to say
17 something about publication that I would not stop her if
18 there were just one or two matters, and she did restrict
19 herself to, I think, three points. But we have to have our
20 procedures, and there has to be an end to argument about
21 matters of evidence and the inference you would draw from
22 it simply because otherwise at the moment you finished
23 Mr. Rampton is entitled to stand up and respond to that,
24 and then what Mr. Rampton said will have prompted you to
25 think of something else and we go on indefinitely.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: Yes. No, it is just...
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29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If it is a new point of law then.
30
31 MR. MORRIS: You said we could bring up new points of law, or if
32 something was obviously inaccurate. I do not think I have
33 got...
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, go ahead, but bear that very much in mind.
36
37 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
38
39 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Otherwise we just set off again on argument
40 about matters.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Right. The point I was making about -- well, OK.
43 Page 8 of Mr. Rampton's submissions on rainforests refers
44 to Fiona Watson's evidence, and he said that her referring
45 to the CEDI document because it was in Portuguese was
46 inadmissible, but the point is she is entitled, as an
47 expert, to give evidence based upon documentation that she
48 has read. The court cannot take the evidence direct from
49 the document if it is in Portuguese, but her opinion is
50 evidence.
51
52 I refer to Mr. Rampton's legal submissions, page 22, where
53 he quotes Bingham L.J., about two-thirds of the way down
54 the page, and it was referring to figures and statistics
55 that were relied on by an expert but not compiled by an
56 expert, and then there is a statement from Mr. Justice
57 Bingham that says, "If an expert refers to the results of
58 research published by a reputable authority in a reputable
59 journal the court would, I think, ordinarily regard these
60 results as supporting inferences fairly to be drawn from
