Day 153 - 12 Jul 95 - Page 51


     
     1        the customers may not have -- it was not the perfect
     2        temperature for the customers to come into the restaurant,
     3        and I can see absolutely no reason why we would possibly
     4        not want to fix the air conditioning.  That is beyond me.
     5
     6   MR. MORRIS:   Can you see any benefits from carrying on,
     7        expecting your employees to work in unlawful or illegal
     8        temperatures?  What was the benefit in that?
     9        A.  Well, firstly, I do not know whether they were illegal
    10        or not.
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, I just do not know.  If we assume, though
    13        I think if you are going to take the point we ought to get
    14        to the bottom of it, that there is a certain minimum
    15        temperature, I would like to know whether there are any
    16        provisos about exceptional circumstances or what is
    17        reasonably practicable or anything of that kind.
    18
    19   MR. MORRIS:   You did not measure the temperature at the time?
    20        A.  I do not remember measuring the temperature at the
    21        time, no.
    22
    23   Q.   One benefit though of continuing to carry on selling
    24        burgers and getting your staff to carry on working would be
    25        that you would keep your profit levels up, would you not?
    26        A.  If it is put that way, obviously, operating as a
    27        business we would want to continue operating, if at all
    28        possible.  As I remember it, if the temperature had become
    29        unbearable or had been too cold, then we would not really
    30        have had any option but to shut the restaurant, but it did
    31        not get to the situation I felt where it was a situation
    32        where it was extremely unpleasant to work in, and that
    33        hence, you know, I allowed the crew members on the till to
    34        wear jumpers.
    35
    36        So, even assuming the air conditioning had packed in, the
    37        heat from the kitchen equipment would have kept the kitchen
    38        area reasonably -- at a reasonable temperature and it would
    39        have only been the till people who it may have affected.
    40
    41   MR. MORRIS:  I am not quite sure where we are now.
    42
    43   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let us take the five minute break and you can
    44        think about it.
    45
    46                          (Short Adjournment)
    47
    48   MR. MORRIS:   I just want to bring up a legal point, which is,
    49        the fact that we do not challenge some specific point in
    50        the examination-in-chief does not mean to say that we 
    51        accept it, and I think that has been the state since the 
    52        beginning of this case, that we are not expected to 
    53        challenge every single word or it be assumed that we
    54        agree.
    55
    56        Secondly, the fact that we do not put everything from all
    57        our witnesses to all McDonald's witnesses, say on
    58        employment, means that there should be the slightest doubt
    59        that means that for some reason we would not want to pursue
    60        the points in our own witness statements.  I think that has

Prev Next Index