Day 163 - 25 Sep 95 - Page 37

     
     1        My Lord, may I remind your Lordship -- I apologise for
     2        this, but perhaps at this stage in the case these
     3        considerations are important, because I shall be asking
     4        your Lordship to exercise your discretion as a matter of
     5        justice to refuse all these amendments, therefore, ask your
     6        Lordship to look at the notes in the White Book which
     7        conveniently set out the principles upon which a late
     8        amendment may be allowed or refused?
     9
    10        Ignoring all questions of whether or not the proposed
    11        amendment is a proper pleading, but focusing on the matters
    12        which influence the exercise of the court's discretion, it
    13        is at page 373 of volume 1, the note in the middle page
    14        20/5-8/8 -- I am sorry.   I have given the wrong
    15        reference.  It is 20/5-8/6 on page 371.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    18
    19   MR. RAMPTON:  Really if I could just ask your Lordship to read
    20        those three short paragraphs -- I will not read them out
         they are so familiar -- they all express the same
    22        principle.
    23
    24   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    25
    26   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, there is an additional consideration
    27        which is, perhaps, for good reason fashionable for the
    28        courts to take account of nowadays, and that is not only
    29        the interests of the parties but the interests of litigants
    30        generally, what one might call the public interest.
    31
    32        I have not got the case here, I do not think, but it was
    33        noticed in particular by Lord Griffiths when he gave the
    34        leading speech in Ketteman v. Hansel Properties, which is
    35        1987, AC 189, at page 220ish, I think it is.  That was a
    36        remarkable case where a new defence was allowed to be
    37        raised after or during closing speeches.  When I say the
    38        interests other litigants and the public interest, by that
    39        I mean simply that they are all waiting to have their cases
    40        tried, and the more a trial in being is extended beyond its
         existing issues, the more those other litigants have to
    42        wait, the judges occupied in the court in which he is
    43        trying the case on hand.
    44
    45        In a sense, I would submit the same considerations apply to
    46        the public interest as they do to the interests of the
    47        parties in this sense, that if there is an amendment of
    48        single importance to be made at a late stage in the case,
    49        albeit that the respondent party to the application for
    50        leave to amend does not like it, and albeit that it may be 
    51        that will extend the length of the case somewhat, then, 
    52        generally speaking, the court will allow it. 
    53
    54        If, on the other hand, what one is faced with is (and this
    55        is how I characterise these proposed amendments) what are
    56        truly to be regarded in the context of the case as a whole
    57        relatively trivial, insignificant allegations and, if in
    58        consequence of leave being granted to make those trivial
    59        additions to the Defence, the other side, the Plaintiffs in
    60        this case, are put to inordinate amounts of trouble and