Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 50
1 expertise a list that is relevant to the times pleaded.
2
3 I also wish to point out that the phrase "no imported beef"
4 was not defined until 1989 as far as I know by the
5 Plaintiffs in those documents they have disclosed. Until
6 that time the US labelling system made it virtually
7 impossible to decide what was imported and what was
8 domestic.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: This is not really discovery. This is, as it
11 were, an informal interrogatory as to who the suppliers
12 were at that time.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: We have quoted from the book authorised by the
15 Plaintiffs, circulated by the Plaintiffs, Behind the
16 Arches, a section which refers to 170 suppliers in the
17 mid-80s. I cannot immediately get the reference, but if it
18 helps the Plaintiffs in making their enquiries.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What you are really saying is that the
21 Plaintiffs saw fit to produce, in effect, a list of
22 suppliers by way of producing specifications from or
23 letters from a number of named suppliers choosing the years
24 1989 and 1990 which are the years when they allege you
25 participated in the publication. Since you particularly
26 picked on 1979, 1983 and 1984, they should be prepared to
27 do the same in relation to those years.
28
29 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is your argument, is it?
32
33 MR. MORRIS: Effectively, yes. It has been in our pleadings
34 from the first day of our pleadings that the US labelling
35 system is -----
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand all about that. What do you say
38 about that?
39
40 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, two things. First of all, if the
41 Defendants had been in the slightest bit interested in this
42 question until now, they would have gone to the suppliers
43 whose identity is revealed by the discovery of the
44 pre-existing documents in file 15, to which I have just
45 drawn your Lordship's attention. Those documents are
46 necessarily disclosable because of the issue which the
47 Defendants raise on the pleading, namely, when you say "no
48 imported beef" you cannot be sure it does not come from a
49 rainforest in Costa Rica for whatever that may be worth at
50 the end of the case, those documents were disclosed.
51
52 It so happens that since they are in the form of statements
53 by people out of the jurisdiction, they also appear in the
54 form of Civil Evidence Act statements in file 15. Their
55 primary appearance in the case was as disclosed documents.
56
57 The Defendants could have taken the opportunity -- I do not
58 know when that discovery was made but it must have been
59 some very considerable time ago -- on seeing that, what
60 I take to be, comprehensive or exhaustive list of meat
