Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 06
1 move on to something else.
2
3 That has been a convenient way of dealing with it, as
4 I hope you agree. It is not the necessary way of dealing
5 with cross-examination. Indeed, it is not the usual way of
6 dealing with cross-examination where there is more than one
7 party with much common interest in their cases.
8
9 So it occurs to me that when Mrs. Barnes completed her
10 evidence-in-chief, if she started to give evidence-in-chief
11 today, Ms. Steel could embark on her cross-examination --
12 if you could be here, so much the better, but if you could
13 not, there we are, or felt you could not, there we are --
14 and then, for instance, I would not call on her to
15 cross-examine today at all, even if Mrs. Barnes finished
16 before the end of today.
17
18 Then what you would be looking to is making some
19 arrangements over Thursday to come and cross-examine
20 yourself, having been through the evidence again which has
21 been given so far and the statements of the witnesses whom
22 Mr. Rampton is about to call. I can see no difficulty with
23 following that procedure. I cannot see any prejudice in
24 following that procedure to either of you.
25
26 I really would have thought that it ought to be possible to
27 complete cross-examination of Mrs. Barnes within two days,
28 bearing in mind that she is dealing with just the health
29 and safety aspect of employment, although I appreciate that
30 there are other topics which it has been said that she
31 might be able to help on specific matters which have
32 already been raised.
33
34 MS. STEEL: I think I should say there is something else. My
35 video recorder, as you know, has been chewing up tapes, as
36 you know, because you saw the one that I showed to
37 Mr. Beavers. Last week I tried to get it fixed. In fact,
38 I rang the week before that. The first appointment I could
39 get for them to come and see it was Monday last week. They
40 said there was some part that was faulty with it. They
41 were ordering the new part and they said it would arrive
42 within a week and they would come and fix it.
43 The impression I got was that they would come and fix it
44 that day, that was yesterday. I rang them up to ask them
45 to come and fix it. They could not come yesterday. The
46 first day they could come was tomorrow morning.
47 I specifically asked for an early time so it could be
48 before coming to court, if it was necessary. All they
49 could say that it would be before 12 o'clock. This is not
50 a personal thing. I never actually had a video recorder
51 until last year. I specifically got it for this case.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But how does that relate to our problem this
54 week?
55
56 MS. STEEL: Because, as it presently stands, tomorrow morning
57 is when they are supposed to be coming, before 12 o'clock.
58 The other thing that I wanted to bring up was that, yes,
59 there are health and safety videos that we want to watch
60 really before finishing cross-examination of Mrs. Barnes.
