Day 087 - 10 Feb 95 - Page 53


     
     1
     2        My Lord, I hope I have covered all the matters on which
     3        I am expected to reply, but if there are others then, no
     4        doubt, your Lordship will tell me.
     5
     6   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, I think the other matter was if
     7        you -- what it seems to me might be the best thing to do as
     8        I see it is nearly 20 to four is I will ask Ms. Steel and
     9        Mr. Morris if they want to reply to any of the matters you
    10        have said which will, by the way, give Ms. Steel an
    11        opportunity to continue what she was saying about pleaded
    12        incidents of food poisoning.
    13
    14        Then I will have heard the argument on the matters which
    15        I listed and, in due course, I will just find an
    16        appropriate moment to deliver a judgment or ruling dealing
    17        with those.  If there is any time and you then want to come
    18        back to what was your ninth point, which is the question of
    19        Justification in Defence to the counterclaim, then we will
    20        deal with that.  But I think I would like to go to back to
    21        you, Ms. Steel, and you, Mr. Morris, first to give you a
    22        reasonable opportunity of saying in answer before
    23        4 o'clock.
    24
    25        One thing I will say, when Mr. Rampton said that I was
    26        "functus", you probably know what it means, but what it
    27        does, in fact, mean is that once a court has made a
    28        decision on a matter, it has carried out its function and
    29        no longer has any jurisdiction on it.  If it mattered,
    30        I might want to debate the point with him -- when you give
    31        judgment at the end of the case that is certainly so, that
    32        is it, and if you are not happy with it you have to go to
    33        another court if you have the right to do so.
    34
    35   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I should not have said that.  What
    36        I meant was that, normally speaking, at an interlocutory
    37        stage a court will not vary it unless there are grounds for
    38        doing so.
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No.  It may very well be different when one
    41        is talking about discovery, in particular, in a long case
    42        which is continuing, because more information tends to come
    43        out and that may give one a basis of reconsideration of a
    44        previous decision.
    45
    46        What I think you have to grapple with in relation to the
    47        food poisoning is that it is quite true that you make some
    48        general allegations -- for instance, the one which tab 5
    49        starts off with, that "meat is responsible for the majority
    50        of cases of food poisoning, particularly chicken and minced 
    51        meat as used in burgers".  You then give specific 
    52        particulars and, in so far as there is an admission of 
    53        those, or what in all sense should be treated as an
    54        admission, you have established that and there is no need
    55        for any further evidence or discovery on it because you
    56        have established what you have set out to prove, you are
    57        using that as a route to proving or helping in proving your
    58        general allegation which you started off with.
    59
    60        It does not mean that because you have still got the

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