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
