Day 301 - 15 Nov 96 - Page 49
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Mrs. Farrah.
2
3 MR. MORRIS: It was absolutely clear that, apart from it being
4 extremely unusual that she had been there since virtually
5 three for four weeks after the second store opened -- she
6 was there before the second store opened, and she was
7 involved with their marketing group, and she had been in
8 McDonald's for 20 years -- it was clear to me that she was
9 actually managerial grade in all but name, but she had
10 chosen to stay on the shop floor rather than have a
11 salaried position or something; and she was given special
12 privileges because of that.
13
14 So, I mean, apart from her, which -- so, effectively, all
15 their witnesses were -- and I think they were all current;
16 I don't think they called anyone at all who had actually
17 left the company. So any admissions, again, that we have
18 got in from their witnesses -----
19
20 MR JUSTICE BELL: There was the gentleman from Bath, was it, who
21 was very content with his £7,500 a year.
22
23 MR. RAMPTON: I think we called, in fact, about nine hourly
24 paid workers. Where Mr. Morris gets his figures from, I do
25 not know.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: But they are all managerial grade, I said, and did
28 not call anybody who was, like, crew, in that they were not
29 managerial position. Sorry. I do think it is significant,
30 and I have not had time, and I will not have time, to go
31 through all that evidence, and I did not make notes -----
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No professional advocate would go through
34 that all that. The evidence on employment covered nearly a
35 year. Whatever I have said in the past about three days
36 out of four, it is still a lot of days evidence.
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: Excluding Preston and Beavers, it was about
39 85 days -- 17 court weeks.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. It is a lot of evidence. No one could
42 be expected to go -----
43
44 MR. MORRIS: I would say that buried in those transcripts are
45 lots of nuggets of admissions and recognitions of our
46 case. No doubt Mr. Rampton will trawl through and find 100
47 examples of things in his favour which would be directly
48 contradicted to an admission in our favour, which is much
49 more significant, we would say; but we have not got time to
50 seek out those admissions -- what we call admissions.
51 Maybe they are not formal admissions, but they are
52 effectively admissions in terms of that witness's
53 evidence.
54
55 So, I think that should be borne in mind when evaluating
56 the evidence as a whole, and Mr. Rampton's submissions in
57 particular, that we cannot possibly compete with his
58 resources in the volume of information he is no doubt going
59 to put into his submission.
60
