Day 175 - 18 Oct 95 - Page 06
1 nervous about spending too much time on it.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. I mean, I am not suggesting it need take
4 very long, but it would be helpful to me, and since the
5 Defendants are not legally represented -- although I am not
6 suggesting they do not have a perfectly good grip of what
7 the legal principles are -- it might help them to hear the
8 way you would put it. Of course, I will be only to pleased
9 to hear anything that they say.
10
11 MR. RAMPTON: What I would like to do, if I may -- I do not know
12 that I will get to do it today, though I do not believe
13 that today will be a long day; tomorrow is quite obviously
14 going to be a short day for one reason or another -- is to
15 send your Lordship a list of the authorities, and I will
16 try to copy the relevant bits and send them also to the
17 Defendants before Friday morning.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Right. Bearing that in mind, if I could just
20 say how I see the procedure for the argument on meaning?
21 It seems to me, since I am trying it as hardly now a
22 preliminary issue, but a median issue, as it were, in the
23 case, it is for you to establish the defamatory meaning, it
24 seems to me, going back to grass roots. So I would suggest
25 that the right procedure is for you to go first with regard
26 to meaning, though I am entirely relaxed about it, then to
27 hear Mr. Steel and Mr. Morris and then to hear anything you
28 wish to say in reply, particularly with regard to any
29 meaning which they have put forward which might not yet
30 have been canvassed during their argument.
31
32 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I am perfectly comfortable with that.
33 The only gloss I can put on, I think I must put on, what
34 your Lordship has just said, is this: in a sense, your
35 Lordship is making a median rule, in another sense, it is a
36 final rule because -----
37
38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Once I have made it, that is it.
39
40 MR. RAMPTON: I cannot go back to the question in my closing
41 speech and nor can the Defendants.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. I just meant I am making it in the
44 middle of the case.
45
46 MR. MORRIS: We would like to call our witness.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
49
50 MR. MORRIS: Mr. Whittle?
51
52 IAIN WHITTLE, affirmed
53 Examined by the Defendants
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you want to sit down at any stage, pull
56 the chair forward. Speak up loud and clear, because the
57 microphones do not magnify your voice. It is better to
58 stand because we normally hear witnesses better if they do,
59 but if you want to sit down, do not hesitate to ask.
60 Yes?
