Irving v. Lipstadt

 1IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
 2Royal Courts of Justice
 3Strand, London
 4Thursday, 13th January 2000
 5
 6Before:
 7MR JUSTICE GRAY
 8
 9B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
10Claimant -and-
11(1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
12(2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
13Defendants
14The Claimant appeared in person
15MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16Second Defendants
17MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
20
21(Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
& Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23PROCEEDINGS - DAY THREE
24
25
26

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 1< DAY 3 Thursday, 13th January 2000
 2MR DAVID IRVING, Recalled.
 3MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Yes, Mr Irving?
 4MR IRVING:    May it please the court, with your Lordship's
 5permission, I have brought the bundle of the documents
 6that we were referring to last night. Unless your
 7Lordship would see any reason against, I propose rapidly
 8stepping through these documents, pausing at the ones
 9which are significant as far as we can determine so far
10from the direction and thrust of the cross-examination.
11MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Yes. You are in the middle of your
12cross-examination. So, in the ordinary way, we will wait
13and see when the documents became relevant to Mr Rampton's
14questions.
15MR IRVING:    They have been in discovery throughout, my Lord.
16MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I follow that. But I suspect most of them
17are going to become relevant to the answers you are going
18to be giving to some of the questions Mr Rampton
19is asking.
20MR IRVING:    I do apprehend it will be useful to the court, I
21appreciate that it is your Lordship's court, but I believe
22it will be useful.
23MR JUSTICE GRAY:    You may well be right. I cannot really tell,
24I have only glanced at it. Shall I ask Mr Rampton --
25because he is cross-examining, so, on the face of it, he
26has the right to continue to cross-examine.

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 1MR RAMPTON:    I have no objection. In a sense, it is either
 2evidence-in-chief in anticipation of cross-examination, or
 3it is what one might call "premature re-examination".
 4MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Yes.
 5MR RAMPTON:    One way or the other it is going to make no
 6difference.
 7MR JUSTICE GRAY:    If you are happy I will not stand in the way.
 8    Before that happens I wonder if I could mention
 9one or two administrative points? The first is, I think
10we are all agreed through nobody's fault, this is not a
11very suitable court and I am very concerned that there are
12members of the public who, I think, are not able to get in
13and listen and want to. Having made enquiries, as I said
14I would, I think there are two possible courts to which we
15could move which were not available or were not thought to
16be available when we started. One is court 73, which
17I have looked at and looks to me to be much better than
18this in almost every respect. There is, apparently,
19another one, which is in Chichester Rents in Chancery
20Lane, which is even bigger. I think I would have some
21slight personal preference for 73, but what I wanted to
22ask you is that I think we should move anyway, because
23this is not satisfactory and it seems to me, unless you
24are going to tell me there are insuperable problems,
25tomorrow is the day to do the move. Are you in agreement
26that that is the right thing to do?

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 1MR IRVING:    I would have suggested doing it over the weekend
 2although I have no logistical problems myself --
 3MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Well, I think they have a lot of problems
 4ahead of them, but I think it is better to do it now than
 5to struggle on and regret it every day from hereon.
 6MR RAMPTON:    That would suit us awfully well, if we could make
 7a fresh start in what I call a "proper big court" on
 8Monday morning.
 9MR IRVING:    Not a fresh start.
10MR JUSTICE GRAY:    We will decide -- not a fresh start.
11MR RAMPTON:    No, thank you.
12MR JUSTICE GRAY:    We will decide during the course of today
13which it is going to be and, obviously, let you know. We
14will take it that on Monday we will be in a different
15court.
16MR RAMPTON:    May I ask where exactly 73 is?
17MR JUSTICE GRAY:    It is where all those new Court of Appeals
18are.
19MR RAMPTON:    In the East Building.
20MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Yes.
21MR RAMPTON:    In the end I would have to say, my Lord, it is a
22matter for you.
23MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I think it is, if you have strong feelings.
24MR RAMPTON:    No, I do not know Chancery Lane much at all
25anyway.
26MR JUSTICE GRAY:    That is point one.

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 1    The next relates to the TA Law Transcripts which
 2are being done. Really, I think I am saying this on
 3behalf of the lady who is doing the transcribing. She is
 4having the most appalling task. She is here all day, and
 5she is by herself, as it were. It would help her if we
 6could slightly slow down. Mr Irving, you speak fairly
 7rapidly anyway. That is not a criticism at all.
 8MR IRVING:    I thought I was speaking slowly.
 9MR JUSTICE GRAY:    If you can bear in mind there is somebody
10trying to take down what you say, if we can try to
11remember to spell out the German names when they crop up
12for the first time. That is going to make everybody's
13life much easier.
14    There is one other point on the transcripts.
15The Day 2 transcript starts at page 104. My own feeling
16(and I do not know whether you share it, Mr Rampton) is
17that it would be better if every day started at 1, so you
18have Day 2, page 1, rather than page 104. I am told that
19is physically possible. So that is what I think we will
20have in the future.
21    That is all that I wanted to raise except that,
22Mr Irving, I have seen (and I do not know whether
23Mr Rampton has) your letter about the letter to me about
24the article in the Stuttgart press. Do you know about
25it?
26MR RAMPTON:    No.

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 1MR IRVING:    I was going to ask, my Lord, I might, having given
 2the Defendants time to consider it, if I might address the
 3court briefly on the matter after the lunch adjournment?
 4MR JUSTICE GRAY:    If you would like to do that, that is fine.
 5Mr Rampton?
 6MR RAMPTON:    I have no comment until I have seen it.
 7MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I do not suppose you will, even when you
 8have.
 9MR RAMPTON:    I see. My Lord, the only thing I would mention
10about the transcript, I do not know what the cure is. Is
11that, normally speaking, of course, one can deduce what it
12was, but here and there -- this is not a criticism of the
13transcriber, far from it -- one sees in square brackets
14the word "German" which represents something that has been
15said in German. That is going to repeat itself
16indefinitely in that case. I do not know what cure is.
17Whether the word should be spelt out each time. It is a
18terribly laborious way of dealing it, or whether we supply
19at some stage when it is important a list of what we
20suppose was the word used. As I say, most of the time one
21can deduce it.
22MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Is it actually going to be all that much of a
23burden to spell it out or, at any rate, spell out the key
24words in the document? I am thinking yesterday
25"liquidierung". One can spell that out.
26MR RAMPTON:    There is going to be more of that today.

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