Day 051 - 14 Nov 94 - Page 05
1 until something like the end of the first week of July.
2 Then one can see that there is remaining issue of the
3 rainforests and publication, closing speeches in November
4 and, after a break for preparation and then, presumably,
5 judgment perhaps -- I think I mean December -- some time in
6 1996.
7
8 I do not proffer this document in terrorem in any sense at
9 all. It does not contain as many breaks as we have had so
10 far. I report to your Lordship merely this, that out of 53
11 days when we could have sat since 12th September your
12 Lordship has, in fact, heard evidence on only 29.
13
14 I fully understand the reason for that and I am not
15 suggesting in any sense that I dissent -- it would be
16 impertinent to do so in any sense -- from the course which
17 your Lordship has chosen to take in this case. I do,
18 however, observe that there is a three week break at
19 Christmas coming up, and that it might be that your
20 Lordship would think that we could get on a bit more
21 quickly after Christmas than we have so far.
22
23 The other observation I make is that, as I said to your
24 Lordship, I think, on Thursday, we would not propose to
25 call employment witnesses about specific allegations that
26 might be an injured hand or a bossy manager unless and
27 until we were confident that the Defendants were going to
28 call the witness who made the allegation. Here I am
29 talking about this country.
30
31 My Lord, to that end, what we would respectfully submit is
32 that it would be helpful to everybody -- your Lordship
33 included -- if by the end of January of next year the
34 Defendants were able to indicate whether they were going to
35 call all those witnesses and, if not, which ones they were
36 going to call and which ones they were not going to call.
37
38 I say the end of January because that gives them not only
39 the Christmas break, it actually gives them very nearly a
40 month of sitting time to make the necessary enquiries.
41
42 What I do not wish to do, partly because it is a waste of
43 my client's time and money, but also because it is a waste
44 of the court's time, is to call witnesses to deal with
45 allegations which, in fact, the Defendants are not going to
46 be able to prove because they have no witness coming to
47 court to prove it.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: When I get into the pink, those are
50 Defendants' witnesses or potential witnesses on employment,
51 are they?
52
53 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord. The ones that are named in the first
54 part of the pink are Plaintiffs' witnesses running through
55 until the end of the first week of May. The Defendants'
56 witnesses do not start on that scenario until Monday,
57 8th May. We have put in our general witnesses first in
58 February and March. We start, according to this scheme,
59 specific witnesses on 27th March. We go through to Easter
60 and beyond Easter, as I say, until the end of the first
