Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 20
1 MR. RAMPTON: I was going to tell you what your Lordship's
2 powers were, but I will do that in a minute.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You must say what you want to say to me.
5 This is something which has been brewing up for weeks so
6 you should know what you want to say. I am giving you an
7 opportunity because you are a separate party to say what
8 you want to say.
9
10 MS. STEEL: I feel that if I have to read the document before
11 deciding what pages I think are relevant and want to be
12 photocopied, a document that is 700 pages long will take a
13 considerable length of time to read to make those
14 decisions. If I have to go to the Plaintiffs' offices to
15 do that, time would definitely need to be set aside in
16 order to do that. It should be borne in mind that it takes
17 over an hour and half to get to the Plaintiffs' offices
18 from where I live and an hour and a half back obviously.
19 I am unlikely to be able to read the whole manual in one
20 day. I would probably be lucky to read it all in two
21 days.
22
23 I do think that the Plaintiffs should just disclose it and
24 take out the section that they do not want us to see. I am
25 sure that witnesses for the Plaintiffs in court have stated
26 that it was a loose leafed volume -- perhaps there is a
27 bound one as well -- because they regularly updated certain
28 sections, but not all of it at the same time. I think that
29 the Plaintiffs should be ordered to make enquiries to see
30 whether they can get hold of a loose leaf version of the
31 Operations Manual and then disclose all the pages apart
32 from the ones that they have particular objection to.
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
35
36 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, it is relatively straightforward I hope.
37 On 7th August 1995, which is almost seven weeks ago to the
38 day, it is, in fact, seven weeks ago to today, we wrote to
39 the Defendants and we said this -- it is paragraph (9) on
40 page 2 of our letter of that date -- "Lastly, with regard
41 to our client's Operations and Training manual, we have now
42 received this once again. With the exception of one
43 section, Security McOpco Insurance, which clearly does not
44 bear on any of the issues in the action, there are other
45 pages within the manual in addition to those already
46 disclosed which may be relevant (although, in our view,
47 much of it is not). We do not propose to photocopy all
48 these pages. However, the manual except for the section on
49 security is available for inspection at our offices by
50 prior appointment."
51
52 That was on 7th August. The court has not sat during the
53 intervening seven weeks. The Defendants have made no
54 attempt to take advantage of that offer of inspection which
55 is the one which is normally made under Ord. 24 r. 9.
56
57 Your Lordship does have a power under Ord. 24 r. 11 in
58 these terms, 11C, 1C.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let me find it.
