Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 45
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If that can be done, it would be the best way
3 to present them.
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5 MR. MORRIS: What has happened is we have got five or six people
6 who have given us different sizes and shapes of bits of
7 paper and drafts and stuff which we have not had time to
8 check, and we need to draw it altogether, really, into
9 something that we can hand over and point you to important
10 parts of.
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12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I will say is that we will not sit
13 tomorrow and we will not sit on Thursday; but you must, on
14 the basis that you have been given that extra time, then
15 say what you have to say about publication and counterclaim
16 in the two by two days I gave you, which will go through to
17 Wednesday, 27th November. What I have in mind then,
18 Mr. Rampton, is that you might take part of Thursday (if
19 you wish) to introduce me to the nature of your written
20 submissions.
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22 MR. RAMPTON: I was going to do a short introduction.
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24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Then I would go away and read on the
25 Thursday, the Friday, the Saturday and the Sunday.
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27 MR. RAMPTON: If your Lordship can bear it!
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29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Unless, when I have heard your introduction,
30 I think it is best that you just carry on, then you can
31 carry on with what you have to say on Monday, 2nd December.
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33 MR. RAMPTON: That would be entirely a matter for your
34 Lordship. The only comment I would make at this stage,
35 which is probably premature, is that given the way that
36 I have now done it I will not actually have very much to
37 say, unless your Lordship should prompt me, because I hope
38 I shall have said it all in writing, apart (as I say) from
39 those few topics at the end which I have put in writing
40 anyway. But it is entirely a matter for your Lordship.
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42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think any harm will be done to
43 either party, and certainly not to my consideration of the
44 case, if the Defendants do their best just to hand up in
45 writing at any stage but certainly before the end of --
46 what I would like the Defendants to do is hand in to me
47 whatever they have in writing on the matter of law by
48 Friday, 6th December. That is after you have started on
49 your submissions, but I do not see any harm in that because
50 I am less concerned about the order in which the legal
51 submissions come and I do not suppose you are, as long as
52 you have an opportunity to respond to anything which is put
53 before me by or on behalf of Ms. Steel or Mr. Morris. In
54 any event, the legal submissions may not be so much a
55 matter of one side putting their arguments and the other
56 side putting theirs, but me, in my own way, trying to get
57 my mind straight on matters which I am, if any, not
58 completely happy about in so far as they or rather the way
59 in which points of law may particularly bear upon this
60 case, particularly so far as things like comment and
