Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 28
1 not hold that kind of position within the Company.
2
3 We use the words, roughly speaking, from one of the
4 authorities: were they the agents of the Company for the
5 purpose of making those statements; to which the answer
6 must plainly be "no". My Lord, that is without evidence.
7
8 What I now offer your Lordship is actual evidence to show
9 -- and I am sorry that this comes late, because the
10 authority of Managers to speak to the press has not been an
11 issue in this case until now -- two pages (and I will get
12 the whole books in due course) from the Managers' Handbooks
13 of 1982 and 1986, which are both headed "Interviews with
14 News Media".
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are these in evidence yet?
17
18 MR. RAMPTON: No, they are not. If your Lordship would like me
19 to prove them strictly, I will do so. In a sense, this is
20 a step which, in my submission, I do not need to take
21 because, as I say, on the facts before your Lordship --
22 which are the unproved statements of Harriet Lamb in her
23 written material and the statements or the interviews of
24 Lynval and Mark Ryan -- even on that material, there is no
25 room for any inference that either of those persons were
26 authorised to speak to the press in the way that they did.
27
28 My Lord, if it be required, I will prove these strictly.
29 What they do, in our respectful submission -- if they are
30 what I say they are -- is to show very clearly that even if
31 there were room for such a prima facie inference or
32 presumption, it is destroyed by these sheets of paper.
33
34 As they have not strictly been proved, your Lordship may
35 prefer that I do not read them out.
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, I will read them to myself.
38
39 MR. RAMPTON: I am grateful. They seem to be more or less
40 identical -- more or less, not quite. (Pause)
41
42 It is the 1986 one which is obviously the relevant one,
43 because it is the end of 1986, and I think these interviews
44 took place in 1987.
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
47
48 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, if that is what I have said it is, that
49 page, quite clearly not only is there no authority for a
50 Manager -- or, indeed, anyone else -- absent an express
51 authorisation for a particular occasion, but there is no
52 general authority in a Manager of a store to talk to the
53 press at all; everything has to be referred to the Public
54 Relations department of the Company. In an emergency, he
55 has to speak first to an Operations Supervisor or Senior
56 Supervisor or an Operations Manager, to get the home
57 telephone numbers of the Public Relations Manager or
58 Directors.
59
60 That being so, it is perfectly clear that neither Lynval
