Day 236 - 17 04 96 - Page 28
Day 236
1 understood that, that was if we had large gaps in our
2 schedule.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Suppose it was blowing up just here and now
5 for the first time, and I was saying: "Why cannot
6 Mr. Carroll be called in the morning?" And this was the
7 first notice you have of him. Why should you not be able
8 to cross-examine him tomorrow, when he is speaking of
9 matters of which you have direct knowledge, if you were
10 involved at all?
11
12 MS. STEEL: The thing is that the Plaintiffs are trying to set
13 the limit about what his evidence is about, but they have
14 just applied to amend their Statement of Claim, which we
15 have barely had time to consider the implications, in
16 respect of what evidence will need to be called relating to
17 whensoever and wheresoever, and Mr. Carroll is Head of
18 Security.
19
20 A number of the leaflets that are in the bundles which the
21 Plaintiffs are going to rely on, as we are responsible for
22 distributing, have his initials at the top, or are reports
23 that were sent to him, and we have not had a chance to
24 consider what questions we, if any, want to ask him about
25 those. They are all new matters that have suddenly come up
26 because of the changing of the Statement of Claim.
27
28 When the case started, we did ask for a week between, or at
29 least a week between each separate issue, to get up to
30 scratch; to read all the relevant documents, to get the
31 overall picture, because it is not just about questioning
32 one witness, it is about how their evidence fits in with
33 the whole picture, and that is what we need the time to do.
34
35 I personally feel that there is not, even if Mr. Carroll
36 went ahead, there would not be a big gain to the court, in
37 terms of court time because he had a time which was
38 originally scheduled. So it is not going to make the case
39 any longer if he just stays in his original slot.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: This is what I have difficulty with. All it
42 was, was a provisional schedule with Plaintiff's
43 publication witnesses on Tuesday, 4th June and I thought
44 I gone out of my way, on a number of occasions, to make it
45 clear that that was not necessarily acceptable to me and
46 I might have to say to Mr. Rampton: "Get on with it so far
47 as publication is concerned, at any stage." So that at any
48 stage from, at least from now onwards, you might have found
49 the publication witnesses were being called.
50
51 MS. STEEL: Well ----
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Did it not occur to you to try and go and
54 spend two days at Barlows over the legal vacation.
55
56 MS. STEEL: Over the legal vacation I did not have a single day
57 off. We were preparing for the rainforest witnesses. We
58 were doing the schedule. We were meeting rainforest
59 witnesses. You also asked us to look through what we
60 wanted to ask Mr. Preston. So I spent a considerable time
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