Day 206 - 22 Jan 96 - Page 37

     
     1        exercise is not to produce a confrontational situation, but
     2        to keep the thing out of the playground, as it were.  If,
     3        for example, the Defendants take what I would regard as a
     4        sensible attitude, if I can satisfy your Lordship that if
     5        I had to I could, as a matter of theory, prove all these
     6        documents, say: "We do not require you to prove those
     7        documents", very likely I shall think it right to do the
     8        same for them.  Take, for example, Grazing in Peckham.
     9        That does not prove itself.  Special rules of evidence
    10        apply to a document of that kind.  There is some common law
    11        on it; there is also some statutory law.  It is horse
    12        trading, really.  If, for their part, they are cooperative
    13        in relation to things that I want to rely on -- many of
    14        which they will want to rely on as well -- very likely I am
    15        not going to be difficult about the documents they want to
    16        rely on.  Grazing in Peckham is a very good example.  If
    17        they are disposed to absolve me from having to prove
    18        strictly the material which Mr. Fairgrieve offers, which is
    19        market research, then I shall say: "Well, I am not going to
    20        insist you call a lady who did the survey of Grazing of
         Peckham."
    22
    23   MR. MORRIS:  We are intending to call her, anyway.
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:  There is no need to call a witness to prove that a
    26        survey was done.  If I say, "Well, I will accept the survey
    27        for what it is worth, not as absolute truth of course, but
    28        as prima facie truth of what the findings were", then there
    29        is no need to call the person.  That is the whole point.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I suggest you do, Ms. Steel, is at least
    32        start by making a list of things like surveys which you
    33        have produced which you want to rely on.  It is a topic I
    34        am rather sensitive about, because I have raised it before;
    35        and, likewise, computer printouts, which is still a very
    36        loose end, so far as I am concerned.
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, they are the easiest of all, as it
    39        happens, because they fit -----
    40
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Maybe.  But if there is any kind of objection
    42        to ones which the Defendants want to rely on, the sooner it
    43        is discovered the better.  It seems to me the only way to
    44        get that is to have a list of the ones you rely on.  If you
    45        do not have time to do it, you do not have time to do it.
    46        But if you can find time, it is a way of finding out
    47        whether there is any objection to them as evidence.
    48
    49   MS. STEEL:   I think that time is really the basic problem.
    50        I mean, we would really like to have a list of all the 
    51        documents we are relying on.  It would make our life a lot 
    52        easier.  But we are finding it hard enough to keep up with 
    53        everything that we are supposed to be doing.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I understand and sympathise with that, but
    56        what I would suggest is, at least start making a list of
    57        the major ones which you think are vital to some particular
    58        point which you want to make.
    59
    60        Before I do rise, Mr. Morris, are you in a position to deal