Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 40


     
     1        bonds or a broker on his behalf.  So it is a customer in
     2        the broad sense.
     3
     4   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes, it looks like it, which is what one would
     5        expect, of course.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  Mr. Rampton, of course, I love legal
     8        theory as much as anyone, but one has to look at where one
     9        is going to go at the end of the day and this argument is
    10        important.  I am going to ask Mr. Morris in a moment if he
    11        has tried to trace Mark Ryan or Lynval.  I do not know when
    12        the matter first came to Mr. Morris' or Ms. Steel's
    13        attention.  The letter from Miss Lamb is in December 1993;
    14        so it is already six and a half years -- six and three
    15        quarters years, for instance, after she interviewed Mark
    16        Ryan; query whether Ms. Steel or Mr. Morris knew some time
    17        before then of the interview, but it is likely they got to
    18        know for some years.  If they write to your instructing
    19        solicitors and say, "Do you know where Mark Ryan or Lynval
    20        are now?" and if the answer is yes, they can trace them and
    21        if the answer is, "No, we have no trace of where Mark Ryan
    22        went after he left Holborn and we do not know where Lynval
    23        went after he left Kentish Town", are they not going to
    24        have a Civil Evidence Act ground, looking at page 594 of
    25        Phipson?
    26
    27   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, they might have, is all I would say at
    28        the moment.  I am just having a look at the rule itself
    29        which, perhaps, does not matter.  Order 38, rule 25:
    30
    31             "The reasons referred to [for not calling a
    32             person] are that the person in question is dead,
    33             or beyond the seas or unfit by reason of his
    34             bodily or mental condition to attend as a
    35             witness or that" -- and this is, perhaps, the
    36             one that matters -----
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is.  It is the one I am looking at.
    39        ".... despite the exercise" -----
    40
    41   MR. RAMPTON:  "..... despite the exercise of reasonable
    42        diligence it has not been possible to identify or find
    43        him".  My Lord, my recollection is -- and Mrs. Brinley-Codd
    44        is just checking it now, I think -- my recollection is that
    45        Lynval has been in the Defendants' pleading almost since
    46        the Particulars of Justification were first served back in
    47        19 ..... -- and what is significant, as I recall, is that
    48        in the Defendants' pleading Lynval is spelt differently
    49        from how Miss Lamb spells it.
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is spelled L-L-E and she spells it with 
    52        one "L", I think, or the other way around. 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:  I think, in the original pleading, it was spelt
    55        with a "Y" --  L-Y-N -----
    56
    57   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  She spells it with a "Y".
    58
    59   MR. RAMPTON:  I missed that then.  But it is differently
    60        spelled, which may be quite significant in the sense that

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