Day 307 - 27 Nov 96 - Page 63


     
     1        those being distributed?"  He said: "No" -- he just saw the
     2        piles sitting there.  Then he said that he saw an identical
     3        copy in the lady's hands.
     4
     5        On the next page, I asked him whether or not he knew
     6        whether they were members of the legal profession or
     7        journalists.  He did not actually know whether or not -- he
     8        said that he thought they were American tourists, but he
     9        did not know that they were.  His only basis for saying
    10        that was because of the way they were dressed.
    11
    12   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Not difficult to spot, are they?
    13
    14   MS. STEEL:   Well, you can say that, in theory; but in practice
    15        you can get it wrong, because not everybody does dress in
    16        the same way.  Even if they were dressed like American
    17        tourists, they could have been American journalists.  As
    18        Mr. Morris pointed out, Mr. Rampton read out the fact sheet
    19        at the beginning of the case and, by reading it out in
    20        court -- well, in any event, the press are entitled to
    21        reprint the subject matter of the litigation in the course
    22        of reporting what is going on in court, so the press would
    23        be entitled to have copies of the fact sheet for that
    24        purpose.
    25
    26        The fact is, there is no evidence about who these people
    27        were, whether or not they were journalists, lawyers, or
    28        whatever.  There is no evidence that they got the copy from
    29        the pile behind us.  There is no evidence that the pile
    30        behind us was anything to do with us.  In fact, there is no
    31        evidence that this so-called pile of leaflets or A4
    32        photocopies that were behind us was, in fact, a pile of
    33        fact sheets, because, as I put to the witness on
    34        page 65: "You do not have any evidence, do you, that the
    35        pile of papers which you saw with a copy of what you say
    36        was the fact sheet on top, was actually a pile of fact
    37        sheets, as opposed to a pile of papers with the fact sheet
    38        on top?"  He said: "No, I have no concrete evidence but
    39        I assumed, because it was a neat little pile, that they
    40        were all the same and they were all the same thickness of
    41        documents going down, that it was the fact sheet."
    42
    43        The point is that he is assuming it is a pile of fact
    44        sheets.
    45
    46        Now, as I said, there were lawyers sitting behind us,
    47        giving us advice.  They had legal papers there which would
    48        have included copies of the fact sheet, so that they could
    49        give us legal advice and, you know, prompt us for things to
    50        say during the course of both the opening speeches and the 
    51        start of the evidence.  It would have been nice if they had 
    52        still been here throughout the trial but, unfortunately, 
    53        they have not been.
    54
    55        He did confirm, at page 65, line 48, that he had just
    56        assumed that they were copies of the fact sheet.
    57
    58        I would say that there is absolutely no basis for that
    59        assumption or no basis for being able to say that the
    60        balance of probabilities was that they were copies of the

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