Day 236 - 17 04 96 - Page 30
Day 236
1 time.
2
3 There is no reason, for example, that, you know, if, well
4 he can either be slotted in his original slot which does
5 mean we would have that week to prepare.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: One possibility is that to save time, we could
8 decide by this Friday, say, which Civil Evidence Act Notice
9 we are definitely going to rely upon on the environment
10 rainforest section, and read those ones out, and have a day
11 doing that. Which would leave maybe Friday, 26th for --
12 I could ask Miss Bramford. So I mean, we could spend the
13 day with Terry Carroll, that you want to press on with
14 Terry Carroll, doing something else, that would save time
15 at a later date.
16
17 It is not that we want to lose any time. It is just that
18 this is a very important fundamental issue, and we want to
19 be able to prepare it and it has only come up in the last
20 couple of days. We do want to inspect, or Ms. Steel is
21 going to inspect the originals and the Plaintiffs have
22 indicated that they have not got them all ready for us to
23 inspect, and that as soon as they are ready to inspect, we
24 can start inspecting them, just in case you wanted to bring
25 publication witnesses forward at a later date. But we do
26 feel we are not ready and it is unfair to go ahead. There
27 is no real reason, apart from it would be a shame to lose a
28 day or something this week. If we could have a date doing
29 something else, then that would deal with that problem. So
30 we are prepared to have a day this week maybe reading out
31 Civil Evidence Act Notices, and maybe going through some of
32 the ones that have not been dealt with on other issues as
33 well.
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Is there anything more you wish to say?
36
37 MS. STEEL: I think that the Plaintiffs do keep asking for
38 advance notice of when our witnesses are going to be called
39 so they can prepare for them. They have experienced
40 lawyers and resources are at their disposal, so they are
41 far more prepared than us anyway. This was extremely short
42 notice, through nothing that was our own fault. The
43 Plaintiffs could have given us, advised us of the situation
44 the week before and said "we cannot contact Mr. Monroe, and
45 that if we do not get him, we are considering calling Mr.
46 Carroll and Mr. Nicolson." There is absolutely no reason
47 why they could not have said those things and I do not
48 really see why we should suffer because we are not properly
49 prepared, through the Plaintiffs' actions; through their
50 failure to give us more notice of this.
51
52 At the end of last term we were ordered to give the order
53 of our rainforest witnesses to the Plaintiffs because they
54 needed time to prepare and they wanted -- I do not know --
55 at least a week. I cannot remember how long it was, but
56 I know it was at least a week for that. I just think in
57 all the circumstances there is virtually no gain, apart
58 from spending one day in court this week, which we can do
59 between now and the end of term anyway, to Mr. Carroll
60 being called and the disadvantages considerably outweigh
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