Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 44
1 just disposal of the case or saving of cost. That was --
2 I hope I have it right -- the drift of Mr. Rampton's
3 argument.
4
5 What I am suggesting, and what I have in mind, is the
6 possibility -- you took three years -- we do not need the
7 turnover figures, if I were in your favour, we do not need
8 them for every month. What we need is figures at a given
9 time, let us say, for the whole previous year, perhaps at
10 the end of '88, '89 and '90; how many people there were in
11 their employment at the end of a year or the end of spring
12 quarter, and how many had been on the books, from which,
13 according to the turnover calculation system, as
14 I understand it, you would be able to work out the turnover
15 and see if it accorded with the figures on that one sheet
16 of paper.
17
18 MS. STEEL: To be honest, I do not think it is a particularly
19 onerous task. It is a matter of asking the computer to
20 print something out. If there are two sets of figures for
21 each month, it is only going to be twice the length of the
22 document we have, which is less than a page. Particularly
23 when it is only for three years, it is going to come to
24 some fraction of a page. Even if the computer has to print
25 out 10 pages, there is not really very much work involved
26 in it.
27
28 There is absolutely no reason why the Plaintiffs should not
29 do it. They are the ones that produced the documents.
30 There is no reason why we should not see the basis for how
31 they worked those figures out. Mr. Rampton actually said:
32 "I keep an eye on the question of is discovery necessary,
33 and if there is one where it is not necessary, just so
34 Ms. Steel can see if she can make some criticisms."
35
36 That is the whole point of getting these documents. We are
37 entitled to criticise the evidence that the Plaintiffs put
38 forward if it is inaccurate. Unless we have the figures
39 that those calculations are based on, we cannot do that.
40
41 When Mr. Kouchoukos gave evidence about the amount of CFCs
42 and HCFCs that were used by the Company, we were able to
43 criticise that because we had the figures that the totals
44 were based upon. If we had not had them, we would have not
45 been able to criticise them and it would have gone
46 unchallenged. We have a right to have the information that
47 we need in order to test whether the evidence that the
48 Plaintiffs are putting in front of the court is correct or
49 not. Where they are making calculations and only putting
50 the results of those calculations, they should have to give
51 the information that they used in order to make those
52 calculations, wherever we want to exercise the right to
53 check whether or not their calculations are correct.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not saying I disagree with that --
56 I will decide upon it -- but if, at the end of the day,
57 I thought it was not justified, getting the extra figures,
58 then what you could say is: "Well, in that case put those
59 figures out of your mind, because we are not prepared to
60 accept them, and the Plaintiffs cannot set about proving
