Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 37


     
     1        about advertising, Mr. Rampton said there was not an issue
     2        about whether their advertising could be criticised, full
     3        stop; it was only about whether their advertising could be
     4        criticised because it was encouraging people to eat
     5        unhealthy food.  In the end, he did withdraw that remark,
     6        and said:  "Perhaps I may have been a bit too hasty."   But
     7        the point is, there was a whole point on it in the
     8        Statement of Claim; and if we had listened to what he had
     9        said, that would have been the end of it.  We would have
    10        thought:  "Oh, well, we had better stop questioning about
    11        that."   He does make all kinds of very strange comments
    12        for tactical advantage, to confuse us and, I think, to
    13        confuse the court as well.
    14
    15        I mean, I have listed another example under 13, where
    16        Mr. Rampton said that our "defence already says that the
    17        Plaintiffs' advertising to children is much to be
    18        reprobated because it deceives them into eating food
    19        which.... is probably going to kill them."  As you must be
    20        well aware, that is nowhere to be found in the pleadings
    21        and is not an issue in this case.
    22
    23        I do not know whether Mr. Rampton's comments that he makes
    24        are standard practice for counsel in a case, but for
    25        litigants in person I can say that it is actually extremely
    26        confusing, and it makes our life very difficult when he
    27        keeps coming up with comments like that and distracting us
    28        from what we are trying to put, and we feel that we have to
    29        deal with what he has said.
    30
    31        I mean, you may have noticed -- well, you have noticed --
    32        that I have been trying to pick up on a lot of what he has
    33        been saying, and you have actually said that I do not need
    34        to pick every gauntlet he throws down.  But the problem is
    35        that, when we do not pick up the gauntlets, they get
    36        interpreted as being something we agree with, and they get
    37        in judgments.  On that, I would refer to the judgment of
    38        Drake J. that Mr. Rampton referred to yesterday.
    39
    40   MR. RAMPTON:  Ms. Steel may be in a difficulty there, because I
    41        do not think I was counsel before Drake J. on that
    42        occasion.  So perhaps she could depersonalise her remarks
    43        just for the moment.
    44
    45   MS. STEEL:  That is not a problem.  Mr. Shields took exactly the
    46        same line.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What was the point on what Drake J. said,
    49        that you want to make?
    50 
    51   MS. STEEL:  The point is that, to us, that just reflected -- it 
    52        was very difficult for us last year, because we were very 
    53        inexperienced; we had only been arguing at a handful of
    54        hearings.  When we tried to counter what Mr. Shields was
    55        saying, we were told to sit and wait our turn, even when it
    56        was something that we felt was a completely outrageous
    57        statement.  By the time it got to our turn to speak, we had
    58        101 other things that we had to deal with as well, and some
    59        of the corrections slipped by us.  But, as a result, they
    60        ended up in judgments, and it looked as though we had not

Prev Next Index