Day 166 - 28 Sep 95 - Page 07
1 solicitor's involvement; whereas the situation with our
2 witnesses is completely different, where their statements
3 are often, you know, just letters hurriedly written out and
4 all that kind of stuff. But we have always tried to take
5 our statements as read, unless there is some very good
6 reason not to, and to build our case upon that. So,
7 I think it would be helpful if they were taken as read, and
8 also, whatever is wrong with my arm, it would save me have
9 to take voluminous notes that are identical to the ones in
10 the statement already.
11
12 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, this is really what troubles me -- I did
13 avert to it yesterday in passing -- that I am quite happy
14 for that to happen with our witnesses, but I do believe the
15 same rule must be applied to the Defendants' witnesses so
16 far as possible.
17
18 The reason I am concerned about it is that an example
19 I gave yesterday was the New Zealand witness, Mr. Alistair
20 Duncan. His statement runs to not quite two sides of A4.
21 What I cannot fathom at the moment is how it could be
22 thought by Mr. Morris on the basis of that statement (which
23 takes five minutes to read) that his evidence-in-chief
24 might take a day. The same goes for Mr. Bowland,
25 Mr. Yensen and one or two of the English witnesses as
26 well. It is very, very puzzling.
27
28 Unless we get some indication from the Defendants why it is
29 they say that such a short and relatively innocuous
30 statement might take a day to extrapolate in
31 evidence-in-chief, then I will invite your Lordship to make
32 a ruling, as your Lordship is entitled to do now, under the
33 latest practice direction about the length of time the
34 Defendants are actually entitled to take in
35 evidence-in-chief, otherwise, therefore, I see this case
36 will never end.
37
38 MR. MORRIS: You see, Mr. Rampton has turned something on its
39 head (as often as he does) to launch an attack against the
40 Defendants. None of the Plaintiffs' witnesses have had
41 their statements taken as read; if we do so, it will be a
42 courtesy that we will give to the court, to help things
43 generally.
44
45 Secondly, we do not have the administrative back up that
46 the Plaintiffs have, so we cannot send a solicitor to New
47 Zealand. If we call someone from New Zealand 12,000 miles
48 to talk about a country, and I believe also in Mr. Duncan's
49 statement he refers to an article which we wrote which is
50 included with his statement, I believe, it certainly was
51 disclosed, which talks about the general situation about
52 unions in New Zealand and their relation with McDonald's.
53
54 So there was an extra point I am was going to make: All
55 the Plaintiffs' witnesses have brought up new matters,
56 despite them being a very considerably experienced law
57 firm, in with all the time and resources in the world they
58 still bring up a lot of new matters that are not in their
59 statements. All I am saying is it will be helpful if
60 Mr. Atkinson could ask Mr. Atkinson if he could take his
