Day 149 - 06 Jul 95 - Page 35
1 five to.
2
3 (Luncheon Adjournment)
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I come now to the Hovi/Bone question as
6 to the question of whether or not the mass of detail which
7 Ms. Hovi gave in the witness box should have been
8 anticipated by us because it was all covered or implied by
9 her written statement. I have already dealt, I think, with
10 that. All I say is that I repeat my submission that would
11 have required the powers of a clairvoyant.
12
13 My Lord, I do respond, however, to the assertion that the
14 detail which she gave in the witness box was but a response
15 (and no more) to the evidence which Mr. Bennett had given
16 when he was called by us. My Lord, that is quite plainly
17 on the chronology and in the evidence available in the
18 transcripts not correct.
19
20 My Lord, Mr. Bennett gave evidence-in-chief -- the
21 chronology is, we submit, constructive -- on 15th March.
22 For Mr. Morris' benefit, this is day 104. He was
23 cross-examined briefly on that day and for the whole of the
24 next day, 16th March, day 105.
25
26 Ms. Hovi did not give evidence until 30th March, that is to
27 say, a whole 14 days later. My Lord, we know, because
28 Ms. Hovi told us, that at some time or another (and we do
29 not know when) she offered to put all her additional
30 information into a supplementary statement and that the
31 Defendants refused that offer.
32
33 My Lord, if that had happened after Mr. Bennett had
34 finished his evidence, then at the very least we should
35 have been served with a supplementary statement during the
36 course of the fortnight before she came to give evidence in
37 the witness box, and so that I could have had time to take
38 proper instructions for cross-examination. That did not
39 happen. Even if it had, it would, of course, have been far
40 too late for me to do anything about it at that time by way
41 of evidence-in-chief.
42
43 In fact, my Lord, we submit that one can see by looking at
44 the cross-examination by the Defendants of Mr. Bennett on
45 16th March that the Defendants already had a good deal, if
46 not all, of the detailed information which Ms. Hovi was
47 intending to provide when she gave evidence, but, of which,
48 of course, we had been given no notice whatsoever.
49
50 My Lord, I will give your Lordship the topics and the page
51 references in the transcripts, the transcript for
52 16th March, which, in our submission, make good what I have
53 just been saying.
54
55 The question of line speed and throughput was raised in,
56 largely speaking, a hypothetical way with Mr. Bennett on
57 pages 11 and 12 and on pages 13 to 15. The question of
58 whether or not sterilization of the sticking knives and the
59 pithing rods was also raised briefly and in a hypothetical
60 way on page 18. Mr. Bennett gave the answer that, in fact,
