Day 270 - 28 Jun 96 - Page 42


     
     1
     2        "I spoke to countless men and women by phone or in person,
     3        federal beef inspectors all, many working specifically at
     4        the Montfort plant.  They all testified verbally or
     5        submitted written reports".
     6
     7        Can I pause there.  I am not going to read any more because
     8        at the moment this is in open court and I object to the
     9        rest of it.  They all testified verbally or submitted
    10        written reports.  In answer to the query which your
    11        Lordship raised a moment ago, if those written reports were
    12        available by the inspectors, then they could be admitted
    13        under section 2, because they would be Civil Evidence Act
    14        statements by the very people who observed the facts relied
    15        on.
    16
    17        But of course we do not have them.  We only have Miss
    18        Claufine-Caston's say-so.  And then in continuation of that
    19        paragraph, she recites what she was told, down to the end
    20        of the third paragraph on the second page, my Lord.  Then,
    21        my Lord, there follow one and a bit paragraphs which do
    22        appear to have been based on her own experience.  My Lord,
    23        I take that down to --
    24
    25   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Well, let me just catch up.  The first
    26        complete paragraph on page 2?
    27
    28   MR. RAMPTON:  No.  Well, yes, the first incomplete paragraph on
    29        page 2 I say is objectionable.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is all part of the argument in relation
    32        to --
    33
    34   MR. RAMPTON:  It is, but beginning with the words in the first
    35        complete paragraph, "knowing that McDonald's I called",
    36        there is a hearsay report of a conversation, I do not mind
    37        about that.  Because she then goes on to report, as she is
    38        entitled to do under section (2), what she herself actually
    39        saw.
    40
    41   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There is no objection to that paragraph?
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:  There is no objection to that paragraph.  Then
    44        there is some irrelevant argy-bargy in the first couple of
    45        sentences in the next paragraph, but I do not object to
    46        that.  Then there is something about her putting on her
    47        hard hat and she went away to the plant and saw the
    48        shipping manifest.  Again, although strictly speaking,
    49        where it says, "On the wall in this room were lists with a
    50        number of trucks coming from various slaughterhouses at any 
    51        one time along with the dates of arrival", strictly 
    52        speaking, again, lists do not prove anything.  But I do not 
    53        object to that.  It says, "Included on several of these
    54        lists was the name Montfort, the very plant in Nebraska
    55        that I had visited".  There I put a thick red line because
    56        from there on, in my submission, as is apparent from the
    57        second half of that sentence, "and where I had recorded
    58        most of the inspector's testimony", we get back into the
    59        area of an inadmissible account of what she has been told
    60        by the inspectors.

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