Day 190 - 23 Nov 95 - Page 02

     
     1                                      Thursday, 23rd November, 1995
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I do not know whether Ms. Lamb is here.
     4        If she is, I fear that there are very grave problems about
     5        her giving evidence in accordance with the scheme suggested
     6        by Mr. Morris in the letter which he sent to us yesterday,
     7        which I hope your Lordship has a copy of.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    10
    11   MR. RAMPTON:  What I do not know is whether your Lordship has
    12        also a copy of the transcript of the interview with the
    13        Assistant Manager at Kentish Town called Lynval (?).
    14
    15   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I have that.
    16
    17   MR. RAMPTON:  We do not have that, and I only saw it yesterday.
    18        My Lord, the problems are related, though in some sense
    19        separate.  The first problem relates to Mr. Morris' wish to
    20        have the statement of Lynval and the statement of the
         second Assistant Manager at Holborn (I think his name is
    22        Ryan) form part of the evidence.  The reason I say that is
    23        that, in our submission, they are not admissible.  Absent
    24        of a proper Civil Evidence Act notice, they could only ever
    25        be admissible as admissions, which are receivable, or would
    26        be if they were, against the Plaintiffs in this case.
    27
    28        My Lord, there is a lot of authority on that.  I have now
    29        done the research, with the help of Mr. Atkinson.  On the
    30        basis of that authority, we will submit that statements of
    31        that kind are plainly inadmissible if they are out of court
    32        statements, which these are.  That is the first problem.
    33
    34        The second problem is that the attendance note some time in
    35        1987 of the meeting attended by Ms. Lamb and Mr. Alimi and
    36        Mr. Percy at the offices of Lovell White & King (as I think
    37        they were in those days) is, even in the edited version
    38        proposed by Mr. Morris, full of what on its face is quite
    39        clearly hearsay as well.
    40
         The only exception that I make in this regard is the notes
    42        of the interview with Ms. Blackett, a senior personnel
    43        field officer at McDonald's Headquarters, because there
    44        I would be likely to concede that she would have had the
    45        requisite authority to speak to a member of the press.
    46
    47        I do not know how your Lordship would wish to deal with
    48        it.  If Ms. Lamb is here, it would be both tedious and
    49        inconvenient for her to sit here while I make a submission
    50        that could well last most of the morning.  The alternative 
    51        would be for her to give such parts of her evidence as I do 
    52        not object to, that is to say, leaving me to make my 
    53        objection later without the evidence having been heard, for
    54        her to verify fact that she had those interviews, and then,
    55        if your Lordship were against my submission, the notes of
    56        those interviews, transcript in one case, could then be
    57        read at a later date.  She does not need to be here for
    58        that, if she has authenticated or verified the fact that
    59        those are the notes she took.
    60