Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 18


     
     1        A.  Yes, sure, OK.
     2
     3   Q.   -- you say anything about that paragraph.
     4
     5   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  I would appreciate it if you yourself do not
     6        understand because this is quite a complicated issue.  You
     7        can ask questions.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You carry on.  I am merely suggesting that
    10        if, for instance -- you just keep reading steadily until
    11        there is some comment to make, but if you can hold your
    12        comment until you get to the end of the paragraph.
    13        A.  Yes.
    14
    15   MR. MORRIS:  "Grills:  An RCD system was installed approximately
    16        two years ago.  This system was to act as a safety device
    17        to avoid the risk of electric shock from the grills.  Due
    18        to a fault in the installation of the system, the grills
    19        regularly tripped out during busy periods.  There would be
    20        very little indication that the grills had tripped out so
    21        sometimes products were served which were undercooked.
    22
    23         "This tripping out sometimes happened so frequently that
    24        the trip fuse was removed altogether due to the pressure of
    25        work.  To my knowledge, the Store Managers and Senior
    26        Supervisor were aware of the problem and took the same
    27        action themselves of removing the trip switch for short
    28        periods.  This problem continued for a very long period of
    29        time".
    30        A.  Can I explain that top section, because there seems to
    31        be some dispute about when the RCD trips whether it shows
    32        up, and initially, in my memory, when it was installed,
    33        when it tripped out it did not take the whole system with
    34        it.  What they are talking about there is when what is
    35        called the HVAC, which sucks the air up away from the, you
    36        know, the smoke and stuff away from the grills, when that
    37        detects smoke in the smoke detectors upstairs, it has got
    38        through, the whole system can trip out, and that would turn
    39        everything off.
    40
    41        But what I am talking about was when the RCDs were first
    42        installed, one trip used to go and what would happen is the
    43        grills would look like they were on because all the little
    44        heat lights at the bottom of the grills would come on, and
    45        they were clam shell grills and the pneumatics would still
    46        work because that did not seem to be attached to the
    47        current that fed the heat for the grills.  So, the grills
    48        would indicate that they were heating up when, in fact, no
    49        power was getting to them, so the temperature would
    50        gradually drop and you would only realise after you had 
    51        looked at the meat and realised after one or two runs that 
    52        it was beginning to go brown, it was beginning to go 
    53        greyish, and then you would know that there was something
    54        wrong and then you could check one.  But by the time you
    55        noticed that, you could almost guarantee you had sent over
    56        a run of 12 hamburgers and six Big Macs by that point that
    57        were, you know, undercooked.
    58
    59        But that is my recollection of it.  I remember that they
    60        came -- they did try and come and fix them and they might

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