Day 313 - 13 Dec 96 - Page 23
1 Company did not have any documentation in relation to
2 employment matters at Colchester.
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: Here I think I ought to intervene because-----
5
6 MS. STEEL: By way of example.
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: This is a misrepresentation by the Defendants.
9 The reason why there were not any Colchester documents
10 disclosed originally was that their Colchester witnesses
11 related to a period of Colchester preceding Mr. Coton. As
12 soon as Mr. Coton witness statement was made then the
13 relevant discovery was made.
14
15 MS. STEEL: I do not accept that, because the documents that
16 got disclosed after Mr. Coton had made his witness
17 statement actually related to quite a long period and there
18 were documents relating to the period of Mr. Mark Davis's
19 management of the store -- rap session notes, and all sorts
20 of documents, performance reviews of managers and things
21 like that. Also, for example, the disclosure of the
22 personal personnel records of Adrian Brett on the day that
23 he had been due to give evidence, despite the fact that his
24 statement had been tendered in July 1993. So the
25 Plaintiffs must have been sitting on his personnel records
26 for the best part of three years. It is clear from this
27 that the Plaintiffs have possession of these document but
28 have failed to disclose them at the relevant time.
29
30 I mean, I have not had time to go through all of the
31 examples there are of this, but I am sure you will remember
32 the number of times that we have complained about discovery
33 throughout this case. Basically, we have been unable to
34 keep on to top of all the paperwork in the case. We do not
35 have a list compiled of which documents were disclosed on
36 what date, and it would take me some time to compile such a
37 list. However, we have indicated, as I said on several
38 occasions during the course of the trial, that we consider
39 that documents should have been disclosed long before they
40 were in fact disclosed, and also on this point it is
41 noteworthy that many documents which appeared in the trial
42 bundles at the start of the trial had never been disclosed
43 prior to that time.
44
45 Additionally to that point, many of the nutrition documents
46 had not been disclosed prior to the preparation of the
47 trial bundles. Then, after that time, there was a whole
48 load of nutrition documents that were added to the trial
49 bundles in the summer of 1994, after most of the Plaintiffs
50 witnesses had given evidence on this issue, and those
51 documents dated back as far as 1983. So it can hardly be
52 said that they did not have them in their possession and
53 therefore could not have disclosed them previously.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: We will take our five minute break then.
56
57 (Short adjournment)
58
59 MR. MORRIS: Just on that last subject about discovery, another
60 three examples. Firstly, about the soya issue, where we
