Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day031.04 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 MR RAMPTON: I cannot remember which section it is. In fact, . 25 section is, I think, about eleven pages long. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not seem to have got it. I may well have put it in the wrong place. MR RAMPTON: It is eleven pages of single spaced typescript. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not have it. MR RAMPTON: Here is another copy. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was not handed in this morning. MR RAMPTON: Again, it follows the scheme of the relevant paragraph in the written skeleton. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot really claim to make sense of that, just seeing it now. MR RAMPTON: No, of course not. It is a late section in the submission, and it needs to be read in the light of everything that has gone before, particularly section of paragraph , the historiography section, but also, of course, the Auschwitz section. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: One other point I am unclear about is precisely which matters the Defendants are now claiming protection of section over. MR JUSTICE GRAY: As to that, again, if we are not having oral argument, it is only right that you should know how I was intending to approach it. This would normally be ventilated in the course of submissions. Effectively, it is really for me to decide and evaluate the seriousness of the various imputations against you. . 26 MR IRVING: Whether section applies? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think you understand the way section works, and to the extent that there may be unproven some relatively minor imputation against you, then it may be that I would invoke section and say, the fact that that particular imputation has not been proved by the Defendants is not going to mean that their defence of justification as a whole fails. MR IRVING: But some matters appear to have been left in limbo like, for example, the question of whether there was a breach of agreement over the Goebbels diaries in Moscow. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not in limbo at all. It is treated fully in the Moscow section. Our conclusion about section is that it is no application in this case because everything that Professor Lipstadt wrote is true in substance. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite, but one has to cater for the possibility. I think we either do have closing submissions or we do not. I think just having odd thoughts being canvassed is just not the way to go about it. I am making every allowance, Mr Irving, for the fact that you are a litigant in person. MR IRVING: Totally ignorant of the law, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have the opportunity to address me on whatever you wish to address me on. I do not know whether you have had the chance to absorb what the Defendants have . 27 said in their closing submissions. If you want to do it, I think now is the opportunity to do it. MR IRVING: Mr Rampton says that he is not pleading section on any of the issues in their pleadings of course, in their defence, that is. MR RAMPTON: I do not say that. What I say is that we do not believe that it has any application, because everything we said is substantially true. That does not mean that, if your Lordship does not agree with that, section may not need to be applied. MR IRVING: They withdrew the Moscow witnesses and their expert reports and the documents that went with them. They have adduced no evidence whatsoever in justification of the allegation that I breached the agreement in the Moscow diaries therefore, and I cannot see therefore ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am in the difficulty that I have to admit that I have not got as far in the Defendants' submissions as the Moscow section, so I do not know, because I had expected that I was going to be taken through the submissions this morning or today. MR IRVING: My Lord, I have dealt ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: So I cannot help you on that. MR IRVING: I dealt, probably quite improperly then, with the matter in my closing submissions where I dealt with the allegations about the Hamas and Hisbollah and Farakan and Pramyat in three or four pages in fact of my closing . 28 statement and strongly suggested that section should not apply. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton has not really addressed that point, but I am well aware there is a great deal in Professor Lipstadt's references to you in her book which have not been sought to be justified at all. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it seems to me that section has got to play some part, whether it avails the defendants is something that I will have decide. MR IRVING: The allegation that I sit in my office beneath a portrait of Adolf Hitler and that kind of thing, for which again they have pleaded no justification, which will certainly go to my seriousness as a historian. I was hoping that we were going to obtain some definitive list from the Defendants of what they do intend to put in that particular sand bucket. MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are entitled to say, we say everything is true, full stop. As I understand Mr Rampton, that is the way it is put in the written submissions, but I think I have to approach it on the basis that section is pleaded and it is there if the defendants need it. MR RAMPTON: Then, my Lord, it is up to the Plaintiff, the Claimant, to point to those -- I do not mean in any sense that it is a great deal -- few parts of what Professor Lipstadt wrote, specific parts, that the Defendants have . 29 not sought specifically to justify, and to say those parts are outside section because they are so serious; what is more, I am entitled to damages for them because they are distinct and severable allegations and not part of a common sting. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, to be fair, from what I have read of Mr Irving's closing statement, he makes very clear what he says has not been proven by the Defendants. MR IRVING: Round about page onwards. MR JUSTICE GRAY: He does not perhaps dot the I by saying, "and that is a severable allegation, which means that, it not having been justified, I am entitled to damages", but that is the thrust of the way he puts it, as I understand it. MR IRVING: I did look at Gatley last night on the severable allegation aspect of it and I am not sure that that is relevant in this particular matter. I tried to work it in but I found that I could not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether it is severable or not? MR IRVING: Whether it is severable or not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There may be something in that. I really do not, if I may say so, think that this is a satisfactory way of dealing with it. MR IRVING: Not in my closing submissions? MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you want to make a closing speech and make whatever points you like, then of course please do so, Mr Irving, and then Mr Rampton can separately reply to . 30 those submissions, rather than having odd points batted around, because it is becoming unstructured and completely unhelpful. MR IRVING: May I therefore now put to the court by way submission the pages of this relating to Pamyat and Hisbollah and those allegations? MR RAMPTON: I really find this very difficult. I have not had Mr Irving's submission long enough even to have had time to look at it. If I had had, I might have had something to say about it. It is as simple as that. I do not think at this stage in the case it is satisfactory. I am leaving aside entirely the inconvenience to your Lordship. It is not satisfactory to the other party that the Claimant should suddenly stand up and make a row of oral submissions. MR IRVING: My Lord this submission is -- MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving. If Mr Irving has serious submissions of fact and law to make about the defence and the way in which it is presented, then we should have them in writing and in time to respond to them. We have not had that opportunity. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am sorry, I had expected that today you would be making your submissions, and you do not want to make them. MR RAMPTON: But they are all in here, both of law and of fact, in seriatim and in detail. I have nothing to add to what . 31 I wrote. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Very well. Subject to either of you, I think I will adjourn now and we will resume tomorrow, but I would like to be absolutely clear in my own mind, because there seems to have been some confusion about today, what it is that is proposed to be done tomorrow. Are we just having statements for public consumption? If so, how long is each side likely to take and is there going to be anything else dealt with tomorrow? MR RAMPTON: No. I have no present intention and, if I should be prompted to change that, of course, I will tell your Lordship. I have no present intention of making any submissions on the facts or the law that are not contained in this file. I therefore intend, with your Lordship's permission, to make a relatively short, maybe an hour and a half, two hour statement, setting out in summary what the Defendants' case is to show that what Professor Lipstadt wrote and Penguin published was in substance true in every single respect. That includes, for example, the Hitler portrait, which is a mere aspect of a wider allegation of Hitler partisanship. It includes the Stockholm meeting, which in its natural meaning is merely a particular example of a much wider picture, that is to say adherence to and association with right-wing, anti-Semitic principles and people. MR IRVING: My Lord, I must then ask you to advise me whether . 32 tomorrow I should make a separate submission on section matters, or whether I can leave it bound up in my closing statement as I do. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would leave it bound up if I were you, but what are you proposing to do? Like Mr Rampton, speak for an hour and a half, two hours? MR IRVING: Based upon a cut down version of this text, I will speak the same length as Mr Rampton. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Very well. 10.30 tomorrow. (The court adjourned until the following day). . 33
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