Day 277 - 10 Jul 96 - Page 06

     
     1        should take.  I have not reached any firm view on that, but
     2        I want to know what the parties have to say about that.  In
     3        long cases, it is good for self-discipline, if no more, to
     4        know how much time one has to address the court on all
     5        matters.  The starting point, since Mr. Rampton has more
     6        experience of these matters than anyone else in the well of
     7        the court, may be to ask you, Mr. Rampton, how long you
     8        would expect to take.  I do not want to embark on it now.
     9
    10   MR. RAMPTON:  Can I just offer an idea which I had, is that I
    11        would not in fact speak for very long, what I would most
    12        likely, if it is attractive to your Lordship, most likely
    13        invite your Lordship to consider would be a series of
    14        propositions about each issue in the case supported by, as
    15        it were, a list of references.  I can do this in a judge
    16        alone case, it would be much more difficult in a jury case
    17        as the jury do not have the documents with them when they
    18        leave the jury box.  A list of references, both in the
    19        transcripts, which I hope will be fairly limited, and in
    20        the documents, which might not be quite so limited, here
         and there I will have to make direct evidence to this that
    22        or the other piece of evidence, but broadly speaking I
    23        would hope to be able to do it that way.  It will be a lot
    24        of work because distillation is always a lot of work, but
    25        by that route I would hope to save maybe not speaking for a
    26        day, or two days or more.
    27
    28   MS. STEEL:  I thought he said six weeks last week.
    29
    30   MR. RAMPTON:  I never said six weeks, it was a joke.
    31
    32   MS. STEEL:  I am sure somebody said something about six weeks.
    33
    34   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let us not get bogged down in this.  I have
    35        only raised it so people can start thinking about matters
    36        of time and such as that for before autumn.  What I would
    37        like to do now is resume Miss Steel's evidence.
    38
    39   MS. STEEL:  There is actually one legal point I wanted to bring
    40        up, which was just when I was giving evidence yesterday
         about one of the McDonald's leaflets, why McDonald's is
    42        going to court and about the woman in Hounslow it had been
    43        handed to, and Mr. Rampton said it was hearsay.  Is he
    44        saying that that means it is, you know, if we want to rely
    45        on that, we are going to have to call evidence or -- well,
    46        because we to want to rely on it, so, you know, we want to
    47        know what the Plaintiff's position is about whether or not
    48        we are going to have to call evidence on that.
    49
    50   MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, what you were told by, what you told me
    51        about what you were told by the woman in Hounslow who got
    52        some material in Hounslow, is not evidence of the
    53        admissible evidence of the truth of what she told you.  It
    54        is only evidence of the fact that she said it to you.  At
    55        the moment I find it difficult to see how that might relate
    56        to any issue.  What it certainly is not is evidence that
    57        she did actually receive or obtain the leaflet in a certain
    58        way in Hounslow.
    59
    60   MS. STEEL:  So, is that the Plaintiff's position, that if we