Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 56
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you want to go over until the morning?
2
3 MR. MORRIS: Yes. There were a couple of the things I would
4 like it say first if that is possible.
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
7
8 MR. MORRIS: The first thing I want to say is that we feel there
9 are some very important issues at stake here. We are
10 seeking the protection of the court in this, because we do
11 not feel that Mr. Rampton has accurately described what the
12 issues are. We do not feel necessarily capable of taking
13 up every gauntlet and following every hare that he has let
14 loose today. We certainly have not been able to cover
15 every point in our skeleton. We will not be able to check
16 every reference tonight. If we were to check every
17 reference we would not necessarily be able to get on top of
18 it or whatever.
19
20 That is the first point I would like to make. The second
21 point I would like to make is that, with all respect to
22 Mr. Rampton who is obviously doing his job, we feel a
23 gigantic con is being perpetrated in this legal argument
24 over an important part of the case following what we see as
25 the virtual collapse of the Plaintiffs' case following
26 certainly their evidence and then our witnesses' evidence.
27 It has been turned into a legal argument as a smoke screen
28 over the actual evidence that has been given.
29
30 The impression given by Mr. Rampton has been that the
31 Defendants do not know what they are doing, and it is only
32 the brilliant clarity of the Plaintiffs' explanation of
33 what the case is about, backed up by the judge, that has
34 really focused on what the real issues are. We completely
35 disagree. We have focused on the real issue continuously,
36 consistently, and our case has been very clearly pleaded
37 (going to the last point) relating absolutely closely to
38 what it actually says in the fact sheet.
39
40 I am not going to go into detail now; obviously that will
41 be dealt with tomorrow. In fact the schoolboy howlers
42 which have been suggested by the Plaintiffs have all been
43 made by the Plaintiffs in confusing diet and specific
44 products and in terms of confusing the words "link" and
45 "cause". In fact, the Plaintiffs have had some difficulty
46 which we can see not only in the way the evidence has gone
47 but in the admissions in their pleadings, and evidence of
48 that is their attempt to amend their Statement of Claim.
49
50 It is our opinion, and we will go into the detail tomorrow,
51 that this so-called clarification is that we have been
52 entitled to defend our case based upon what they have
53 stated in the Statement of Claim and, as Mr. Rampton quite
54 rightly said, there was no obligation on us to have
55 defended a higher meaning than the one which they
56 originally pleaded in their Statement of Claim.
57
58 It is quite clear that we have been also quite consistent
59 in looking at the word "link" in the many ways in which it
60 can be interpreted, including "cause" to some extent,
