Mr Bates vs The Post Office
Discussion
skwdenyer said:
Agreed, very refreshing. Not sure the public perception of justice is well-served by a presiding judge saying his powers of concentration can't continue past 4pm, however 
It's not just about the judge. Some hours and timings are constrained by the transcriber as well.Agreed.
Having watched a lot of today's proceedings, Simon Clarke seems to have come across as not only a credible witness, but also a very competent professional - particularly just now dealing with Henry's leading questions. Really interesting seeing these high level legal professionals going toe to toe.
Whether one agrees with his approach and actions during the previous years (and he freely admits mistakes he made), it's refreshing, and a far cry from the evasive rubbish and lies spouted by the likes of Jarnail Singh, Van der Bogard etc..
Having watched a lot of today's proceedings, Simon Clarke seems to have come across as not only a credible witness, but also a very competent professional - particularly just now dealing with Henry's leading questions. Really interesting seeing these high level legal professionals going toe to toe.
Whether one agrees with his approach and actions during the previous years (and he freely admits mistakes he made), it's refreshing, and a far cry from the evasive rubbish and lies spouted by the likes of Jarnail Singh, Van der Bogard etc..
Edited by C n C on Thursday 9th May 16:32
With Sir Wynn as referee 
I think Clarke generally did well. He made a big thing about being the person who single-handedly started the ball rolling on the whole exposure due to his advice on Jenkins (which is probably over-reaching a bit), but he did get a lot of firm questioning about how much more should he have done ? I definitely got the impression that he had somewhat avoided looking under rocks that he could reasonably have looked under, despite his explanations of why he hadn't done so.
It's interesting how much the witness lawyers (Clarke, Altman, others) dislike being questioned by the Core Participant lawyers. The body language is much more closed and hostile, and the answers a lot more combative. I guess this is partly due to the somewhat grandstanding style that many of CP lawyers employ, but there definitely seems to be an element of "Who are you, to be questioning my judgement like this ?" The witnesses are much less respectful than with the Inquiry lawyers.
You, I agree. I used similar terms on another Forum. Being combative is all well and good, and indeed may be a client pleaser, but it needs to be used wisely, and I thought Henry overdid it slightly this afternoon when I picked up his x-exam. at about 4pm. It allowed Clarke to take the moral high ground and gave him an easier 'out' than he should have had on occasion, I thought.
I think Clarke was being a little unfairly pushed this afternoon as to why he hadn’t launched some sort of review. He wasn’t in-house counsel for POL. He was engaged to do a piece of work. How would he have got POL to sign off on another big piece of work going back over past cases? He’d be more likely to have his firm replaced by POL! He was rather restrained I thought in answering those questions.
His written advices were clearly aimed at getting POL to do what he wanted without throwing all his toys out of a pram. Had I been him, I’d have been tempted to ask the questioning counsel whether they’d never done anything similar to advise their clients or maybe pulled their punches a little so as not to just get fired. Very little legal advice ever ends up in the public domain like this. Whilst I agree with him that it was probably for the Court of Appeal to deal with convicted SPMs, in an ideal world he’d have written something like “in my view, convicted SPMs should not be in mediation; but instead, POL should review disclosure in respect of all prior cases.” But his advices clearly show he didn’t expect that to be something POL would want to hear.
I’m sure he could have done more. But he seems to be one of the few who had even the most basic sense of doing the right thing. I was also surprised he didn’t answer the questions over Public Interest (as opposed to evidential insufficiency) by simply saying “the courts were always going to treat POL as accurate and truthful, to the extent that even if without a great expert witness we could likely win; it was in the public interest to stop that from happening.”
The only smoking gun seems to be for all the defence lawyers. Why did they not pick up that the expert witness reports didn’t contain the necessary inclusions to satisfy the basic test of a properly-formed expert report? Grounds for some claims there, I might imagine.
Clarke’s no saint. He was hired as an advocate for POL and seems to have tried to make a reasonable fist of what he found. That this, along with his apparent relative candour and lack of a pretence of failing memory, makes him the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind - sadly, still quite a low bar.
His written advices were clearly aimed at getting POL to do what he wanted without throwing all his toys out of a pram. Had I been him, I’d have been tempted to ask the questioning counsel whether they’d never done anything similar to advise their clients or maybe pulled their punches a little so as not to just get fired. Very little legal advice ever ends up in the public domain like this. Whilst I agree with him that it was probably for the Court of Appeal to deal with convicted SPMs, in an ideal world he’d have written something like “in my view, convicted SPMs should not be in mediation; but instead, POL should review disclosure in respect of all prior cases.” But his advices clearly show he didn’t expect that to be something POL would want to hear.
I’m sure he could have done more. But he seems to be one of the few who had even the most basic sense of doing the right thing. I was also surprised he didn’t answer the questions over Public Interest (as opposed to evidential insufficiency) by simply saying “the courts were always going to treat POL as accurate and truthful, to the extent that even if without a great expert witness we could likely win; it was in the public interest to stop that from happening.”
The only smoking gun seems to be for all the defence lawyers. Why did they not pick up that the expert witness reports didn’t contain the necessary inclusions to satisfy the basic test of a properly-formed expert report? Grounds for some claims there, I might imagine.
Clarke’s no saint. He was hired as an advocate for POL and seems to have tried to make a reasonable fist of what he found. That this, along with his apparent relative candour and lack of a pretence of failing memory, makes him the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind - sadly, still quite a low bar.
The thing that none of the examining lawyers will ask is "How many billable hours were you putting in for POL". What's really going on here is that it was a gravy train for all the lawyers (and still is), there was no way any of them were going to whistle blow on the client who was filling their timesheets.
skwdenyer said:
Agreed, very refreshing. Not sure the public perception of justice is well-served by a presiding judge saying his powers of concentration can't continue past 4pm, however
That's what I thought until I sat in on a civil case I was involved in for 4 or 5 days - the amount of concentration needed to keep up with what is going on is intense - went home each day exhausted so I can only imagine how tired the legal people were. The fact that there is a huge amount of background material to this will make it much harderPlus he is phoning it in from home.
simonrockman said:
The thing that none of the examining lawyers will ask is "How many billable hours were you putting in for POL". What's really going on here is that it was a gravy train for all the lawyers (and still is), there was no way any of them were going to whistle blow on the client who was filling their timesheets.
EXACTLY. 100% nail on the head.And the enquiry is the same just a huge gravey train, Just sit and work out how much it is going to cost when you have those appearing being paid and all those lawyers and admin workers cashing in. What is it now 135 days.. why would you want it over when your cashing in.
And for what.. "We cannot find a single controlling mind and it's clear mistakes were made, lessons have been learnt".
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