Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 39


     
     1        general -- complaints do not matter.  Complaints are
     2        irrelevant, whether they be complaints by NLRB in the
     3        United States or complaints by customers in Bath.  What
     4        matters is whether the complaint is well-founded.
     5
     6        It is not relevant to prove by way of justification that a
     7        number of customers complained about under-cooked
     8        products.  Customers will complain for all sorts of
     9        reasons.  As all of us know, even when we have not actually
    10        run a restaurant, such complaints are very often
    11        ill-founded, sometimes in good faith and sometimes in bad
    12        faith.
    13
    14        What Mr. Richards says is that it is very rare that any
    15        such complaint was found to be substantiated.  If your
    16        Lordship were to say to us:  "Well, have a look at the
    17        incident report forms for a particular period to give a
    18        reasonable spread of time, and see how many of the
    19        complaints were found to be substantiated", and if there is
    20        a relevant incident report form for that period --
    21        Mr. Morris has asked for I think the whole of 1994 -- why,
    22        then I can see that one could either make a statement to
    23        the effect that there were out of X number of complaints
    24        one, two or three that could be substantiated or none, as
    25        the case may be, or one could simply disclose those
    26        incident report forms which showed that a complaint was
    27        substantiated.  That I could see.  Once again, Mr. Morris
    28        has cast his net as wide as the sea in the hope of picking
    29        up something he does not know about.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Is your understanding the same as mine, that
    32        the incident report forms only go through if there is some
    33        substance to the report of under-cooking.
    34
    35   MR. RAMPTON:  Not quite, I think.  Mr. Atkinson will correct me
    36        about this if I am wrong.  I think what happens is that if
    37        the management in the restaurant thinks that there may be
    38        substance in it, if it is obviously not substantiated, if
    39        the product is plainly not under-cooked or whatever it is,
    40        then nothing happens and the matter is sorted out between
    41        the management and the customer.  But if the management has
    42        a doubt about it, then what it does is to make an incident
    43        report form and I believe send the offending or not
    44        offending item of produce on to somebody higher up so that
    45        they can make a dispassionate judgment -- is this right?
    46
    47   MR. ATKINSON:  Yes.
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  -- whether or not the complaint is well-founded.
    50        I think he says it in his statement, but I agree with your 
    51        Lordship that the statement is in this respect a 
    52        little  ----- 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Either way it might well be that there are
    55        substantially less than 52 relevant forms if, indeed, they
    56        are still in existence.
    57
    58   MR. RAMPTON:  Incident report forms.
    59
    60   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, in relation to under-cooked food.

Prev Next Index