Day 243 - 02 May 96 - Page 34
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2 MR. MORRIS: My understanding -- I do not know if this is right,
3 I think it is right -- is that if we have got 40,000
4 documents of which 25,000 might be company documents or
5 30,000 might be company documents -- pages, that is; pages
6 of documents -- that it is not necessary to identify each
7 line of each page that we wish to rely on, especially if it
8 has been brought up, "This is your Operations Manual". We
9 can assume that anything in the Operations Manual that has
10 been flagged up in court or any pages that have been looked
11 at we can use as evidence. It is impossible for us to say,
12 "These", you know, "17,000 pages with these lines we want
13 to rely on". It is just physically not possible.
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15 So, I was working under the assumption that any McDonald's
16 document that is accepted that it comes from McDonald's can
17 be used by us as an admission if we wish to, as long as it
18 is accepted it is a genuine document. That is basically my
19 understanding of the situation. Whereas if the Plaintiffs
20 wish to use -- I am not sure if the same applies to the
21 Plaintiffs because -- but, I mean, this is -- I am a bit
22 confused now. That is my understanding.
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24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think you have to sit down and think about
25 it. I am not going to give any view on any of these
26 things. I think it is dangerous and may be misleading.
27 You could do something like this: "McDonald's Manuals" and
28 give a description of them, "are evidence of McDonald's
29 practices they would have it be". I am not suggesting that
30 is the right approach to it, but if you are in doubt about
31 it write something like that down and then I can ask
32 Mr. Rampton if there is any doubt about it. But think of
33 the documents or the class of documents and the purpose for
34 which you propose to use them. You can make assumptions if
35 you like. The whole purpose of this, as I said a moment
36 ago to Ms. Steel, is to draw your attention to it so that
37 you are aware that there may be pitfalls.
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39 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, there is only one other thing -- probably
40 this is not necessary to say -- but as we have realised
41 that we must serve additional witness statements in
42 relation to the Amended Defence, the recently Amended
43 Defence -- in fact, I think it is about a fifth amendment
44 to the Defence but never mind that -- so too, my Lord, in
45 our submission, the Defendants and their witnesses, if they
46 are going to give evidence either about that or about the
47 re-amended Statement of Claim, should serve additional
48 witness statements in good time. I do not mean tomorrow,
49 or anything like that. That is the first point.
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51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: All I am going to say is that, as far as I am
52 concerned, the statements served of Ms. Steel and
53 Mr. Morris and any of their publication witnesses set out
54 the essence of the evidence which they are to give, and if
55 there are any matters of significance which they propose to
56 give in addition then that should be covered by additional
57 statements. For instance, certainly in so far as their
58 publication witnesses are concerned, it is a matter of
59 calling them to give the evidence which is in their
60 statements and then it is just a question of arguing what
