Day 253 - 21 May 96 - Page 42


     
     1   MR. MORRIS:  We are happy to take that course.  In fact, I can
     2        rearrange the meeting with the solicitor but I know that
     3        the Haringey camp is very keen to have a meeting on that
     4        day to sort things out, because there are all sorts of
     5        questions, but we are happy to start 10.30 on Thursday here
     6        and try and get Mr. Nicholson finished on that day.
     7
     8   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, what I suggest, you do your best.  If
     9        the meeting must be on Thursday, rearrange it for some time
    10        which means at least on Thursday we can sit until three
    11        o'clock.  Then we will call it a day until after the
    12        vacation so far as this trial is concerned.
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:  I will do that.
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What about the draft interlocutory
    17        Mr. Rampton?
    18
    19   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, the Defendants need leave.  As to the
    20        No. 1, I have done the best I can.  We have sent the
    21        Defendants the names of all the inquiry agents we know, we
    22        have told them there is one employed by Bishops whose name
    23        we do not know, and never did know, and that is the end of
    24        No. 1 so far as we are concerned.  It may be very well be
    25        the employer knows the name, but that is not knowledge
    26        within the knowledge within the knowledge of McDonald's.
    27        There is nothing I can do about that.  We have never known
    28        that person, we do not know its gender, if I may put it
    29        like that.  No. 2, I do not have any information supplied
    30        about No. 2 that the Defendants do not already have, except
    31        that I think, and I willingly supply this now, Mr. Russell
    32        whose first name is Jack, went by the name of Jack and gave
    33        the additional information that he was Jack from Mitcham.
    34        That is all that is known about that question.
    35
    36        No. 3, no, I would resist that.  I have given the date of
    37        every meeting attended by every agent at which anything
    38        relevant to these proceedings, including the Defendants'
    39        recent amendment, was raised or discussed or happened.
    40        Meetings, if any, which they attended at which nothing
    41        relevant happened, discussed or was discussed or raised are
    42        not relevant.  I add this, that no information relating to
    43        inquiry agents that I do not intend to call is accessible
    44        by the Defendants for the reason that that information
    45        remains the subject of legal professional privilege and
    46        there is quite a lot of argument about that, and the
    47        conclusions reached about it in the authorities which I
    48        have researched.
    49
    50        May I summarise what I take the legal position to be, for 
    51        which I owe to debt to Mr. Atkinson?  It is this:  that 
    52        where information is the subject of legal professional 
    53        privilege that privilege is only waived at the time when
    54        the party who has the privilege deploys that information in
    55        evidence.  From that follows, for example, this
    56        proposition:  that the notes of the meetings which were
    57        taken by the inquiry agents, and which we have in fact
    58        disclosed, relating to the meetings that they attended are
    59        quite obviously privileged information.
    60

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