Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 41
1 one per week.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, and you have between 90 and 100 people,
4 are there not?
5
6 MR. MORRIS: No.
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: Time sheets, yes.
9
10 MR. MORRIS: No, as far as I understand, all the workers are on
11 the same time sheet. It may be two sheets for a week or
12 one sheet for a week. The staff are all on one sheet. You
13 can see the times which they have worked and been scheduled
14 for. The ones that we disclosed, for example, from
15 Orpington which had, of course, five breaches of
16 regulations on them incidentally. It was only actually two
17 pages. So it will not be more than 100 sheets.
18
19 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, the point I was going to make in response
20 to Mr. Morris' unhelpful interjection (to abandon sarcasm
21 for a moment) was this, that the Defendants (which they
22 repeatedly forget) have a case to make. They have to make
23 a defence of justification. It is no part of McDonald's
24 case, as a matter of strict law, to satisfy your Lordship
25 by positive, affirmative proof that they are lily white.
26
27 The burden is on the Defendants to satisfy your Lordship,
28 as a matter of probability, that what they say in their
29 defence or through their witnesses is true. They cannot
30 get discovery of the Plaintiffs' documents in order to
31 assist them in that process unless they give proper
32 particulars. That applies as much to a witness statement
33 as it does to a pleading of the allegations which they
34 make.
35
36 Mr. Logan's supplementary statement is devoid of such
37 particulars. If it had been served as a pleading at the
38 proper time, it would have been subject to the usual
39 request: Who, when, where, by what means, in what
40 circumstances, by what agent of the Plaintiffs were these
41 things done? Until those particulars are provided,
42 I decline to make the discovery which is asked for.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there anything you want to say in reply to
45 that?
46
47 MR. MORRIS: I suppose we might as well start with Logan as that
48 was the last thing fresh in our minds. First of all,
49 Mr. Logan was talking about a pattern of behaviour. He was
50 part of the management team. He is entitled to draw
51 conclusions about the pattern of management practices. It
52 is a regular feature of the strategy of the Plaintiffs to
53 say that if it is an individual, it is not relevant because
54 it is only one individual, then it is not a standard
55 practice, and if it is a general application, it is too
56 vague to have to supply any document. So we cannot win
57 either way on that line.
58
59 The point is that it is not a vague allegation that we are
60 talking about. We are talking about a specific store at a
