Stone v The King

[2023] HCATrans 80

[2023] HCATrans 080

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
  Melbourne  No M79 of 2022

B e t w e e n -

KATE STONE

Applicant

and

THE KING

Respondent

Application for special leave to appeal

GAGELER J
EDELMAN J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT CANBERRA AND BY VIDEO CONNECTION

ON FRIDAY, 9 JUNE 2023, AT 11.45 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

MR R.F. EDNEY:   May it please the Court, your Honours, I appear on behalf of the applicant with my learned juniors MS K. BALLARD and MS S.A. STAFFORD.  (instructed by Gallant Law)

MR C.B. BOYCE, KC:   May it please the Court, I appear for the respondent with MS J.B. WARREN.  (instructed by Office of Public Prosecutions (Vic))

GAGELER J:   Thank you, Mr Boyce.  Yes, Mr Edney.

MR EDNEY:   Yes, thank you, your Honours.

GAGELER J:   You need an extension of time, I think.  Is that right?

MR EDNEY:   Yes, we do, your Honour.  We do so on the basis that the applicant is indigent in the sense of had no financial resources and has been assisted on a pro bono basis for a significant period of time.  We would ask that any extension application be dealt with in terms of the substantial merits of the application.

GAGELER J:   Are you content with that?

MR BOYCE:   We are content with that.  We do oppose.

GAGELER J:   Thank you.  Yes, please proceed, Mr Edney.

MR EDNEY:   Thank you, your Honours.  The only issue in this case was the identity of the person who killed Darren Reid.  The prosecution conducted the trial on the basis that they had to exclude the reasonable possibility that Jason Baxter had killed Darren Reid.  The jury were told in the final charge by her Honour that:

The prosecution must, on the evidence you have heard, exclude beyond reasonable doubt, the reasonable possibility that Jason Baxter or someone else was responsible for the death of Darren Reid –

In those circumstances and in that factual background, the call charge records of Jason Baxter for 18 and 19 December 2016 were always relevant and should have been disclosed in the early stage of the proceedings.  Your Honours would be aware that the mere existence of those call charge records to the defence only occurred – and only occurred inadvertently – during cross-examination of the last witness:  the police informant.  In our submission, such late disclosure was inconsistent with how the prosecution had run its case from the very start.

What we mean by that, your Honours, is that first, in the hand‑up brief which commenced the proceedings against the applicant, Jason Baxter, and four alibi witnesses who were said to support him – and that was served on 30 March 2017.  The existence of those call charge records was not disclosed in the Form 30.  The Form 30, your Honours, is a form which is attached as part of the original hand‑up – initial hand-up brief, and what it does is gives practical application to section 110 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which alerts the accused to material which the prosecution has, but which it does not intend to rely.

The second stage was the Form 32, which your Honours will also see reference to in the materials.  That was dated 22 May 2017.  The applicant’s legal representatives sought to cross‑examine Jason Baxter and also his alibi witnesses.

GAGELER J:   I am sorry, what is the distinction between a Form 30 and a Form 32?

MR EDNEY:   The Form 30 is what the prosecution, via the informant, provide to the representatives of the accused and also to the court.

GAGELER J:   It gives effect to section 110.

MR EDNEY:   Yes, of the Criminal Procedure Act.

GAGELER J:   Yes, relevantly, section 110(e)(iii).

MR EDNEY:   Yes. 

GAGELER J:   Yes.  And – Form 32 you mentioned, what is that?

MR EDNEY:   Form 32 is a document that is jointly prepared between the parties.  So, between the prosecution and the defence.  What it does is to, firstly, list the witnesses for the committal hearing, and as part of that, the accused has to identify an issue and a relevance to the questioning of a witness.

Jason Baxter was sought to be cross‑examined.  The issue was defined in the Form 32 as to his movements over 18 and 19 December.  What Form 32 also does – it is a joint document where the accused, in effect, seeks the material that is in the Form 30 as part of their case.  But, at that point on 22 May, when that joint document was filed, the existence of the call charge records of Jason Baxter were not disclosed.  The next stage of the proceeding in this matter was a committal hearing in November 2017.  The alibi witnesses were cross‑examined, Jason Baxter was not cross‑examined because he was unavailable at that time.  And your Honours will see, later, on 15 October 2018, there was a Basha hearing conducted with him.  That was because he was not available at the committal hearing in November 2017.

I should say about those call charge records, they were not disclosed at the committal hearing.  Following the committal, an indictment was filed in this case on 8 August 2018.  Jason Baxter and four alibi witnesses were named on the indictment.  I have just taken your Honours to the Basha hearing with Jason Baxter on 15 October 2018 and again, those call charge records were not disclosed. 

The trial commenced a week later, and in the opening address of the prosecutor on 22 October 2018, a significant amount of time was dedicated to the issue of Jason Baxter and his alibis.  So, in our submission, what was clear by the time this matter had got to trial – even before then, in how the parties approached the committal proceedings – the positions of the parties were stark and clear.  The issue was properly joined between the parties.  Really, the only issue in the case was the identity of the person who had murdered Darren Reid.

What we say is the error in the court below is that – and this is at paragraph 54 of the judgment below, which is at the appeal book page 151, where their Honours referred to resiling from the nomination of Jason Baxter when she was told that the photo board part of identification was wrong.  That record of interview occurred on 4 January 2017, and the applicant was charged that day.  We make this observation:  at that point, the informant had call charge records of Jason Baxter, because they were provided to him on 29 December 2016 – so, around five or six days before the interview.  The problem with the Court of Appeal’s analysis, which starts at 54, is to treat what the applicant said in that interview as decisive of the disclosure obligations that rested upon the Crown. 

EDELMAN J:   Mr Edney, even if one assumes for the moment that that was an error by the Court of Appeal, you have the larger – or potentially a larger question, which is paragraph 73 onwards, where the Court of Appeal says, even if they are mistaken and so that the failure to disclose the records was an error, and the records should have been disclosed – perhaps, even as early as the Form 30 or Form 32 – there was no miscarriage of justice, and certainly no substantial miscarriage of justice.  What do you say would have been done differently with any real effect on the process of justice had the records are being disclosed when you say they should have been disclosed?

MR EDNEY:   Can I approach it in this way, Justice Edelman?  The point, in modern criminal trials, is to avoid trial by ambush.  What that means is that an accused and his or her representatives should be given proper time to contemplate significance of the disclosed material.  They can determine how to use it, how does it integrate into the whole of the evidence, and what, if any, further enquiries could be made.

Call charge records are important, in this regard, in that they provide an objective, independent means of determining people’s movements.  They are important for what they show and what they do not show; they are important to how people move; a person is contacted.  They can be used effectively, and are used effectively, as a tool in cross‑examination.

EDELMAN J:   Is that all by way of saying, then, that the defence – to the extent to which the defence case was run, including in cross-examination, that Jason Baxter was still in the frame, or potentially still in the frame, that case may not have been run that way had the disclosures been made at the appropriate time?

MR EDNEY:   Yes, and that is the wellspring of injustice in this case; that lost opportunity to properly consider the material in a lengthy murder trial made up of a number of complex issues.  It would have affected, in our submission, how the alibi witnesses were challenged.  They certainly were cross‑examined, but the point of the phone records was to not only confront Jason Baxter, who, in our submission, was at least inconsistent in a significant way about when he refers to making a phone call 11.30 at night, when there is no such record of a call, but being able to use that as a tool in cross‑examination.

A substantial miscarriage of justice is measured by how late this disclosure was, because it occurred, as the Court is aware, at the very end of the trial.  We had a trial run in a circumstance where the parties were agreed on what was, really, the only fact in issue.  One side of the Bar table had those records, one side of the Bar table did not; it was under a veil of ignorance.  In those circumstances, to concentrate, as the Court of Appeal did, on what happened at that very late stage, in our submission, was to ask the wrong question as to relevance.

These records were always relevant, they were always disclosable, and they should have been.  The miscarriage of justice occurs because by the time it emerges at that late stage in the proceedings it is very difficult, in our submission, to say that the trial would not have been conducted any other way, had those records been available.

GAGELER J:   What the Court of Appeal really seems to be saying in terms is that there was a forensic choice made at that late stage.  How do you deal with that?

MR EDNEY:   The idea of forensic choice in this context is complicated.  The experience of criminal trials are ones where the stakes are very high and the pressure on all parties – particularly those representing the accused – are great.  Decisions, of course, have to be made on the run, and are, but here the accused was confronted with provision of – or the accused’s counsel – with the provision of records which it could not cross‑examine the informant about, the informant could give no evidence about, because those records and what they mean are the province of expert testimony.  That was the problem here.

The only option, really, sensibly open was to possibly seek a discharge of the jury or just proceed as best he could.  Obviously, he chose the latter.  But that, in our submission, is no answer to what we say was a substantial miscarriage of justice, because if there had been timely disclosure of this material, there could have well been – and probably would have been – preparation of or obtaining of expert evidence in relation to phone records.  So, in our submission, the idea of ‑ ‑ ‑

EDELMAN J:   But we do not have any of that expert – none of that was put before the Court of Appeal.  So, what we do have, though, is the first bullet point of paragraph 73, where the Court of Appeal says that all we really have from the phone records is that:

the phone calls closest in time to the incident were all either some time before some time after the incident itself.

How do you say that that would have informed any different forensic decision if that had been known at the start of the trial or earlier by the defence?  In other words, the defence are confronted with what they are aware is a prosecution case that Jason Baxter has an alibi. 

MR EDNEY:   Yes.

EDELMAN J:   If the defence are given a disclosure which also adds the fact that there are phone calls some time before and some time after the incident, how is that going to affect the forensic approach that the defence takes?

MR EDNEY:   In our submission, the forensic position that counsel was placed in here was a most difficult one because the analysis of the call charge records at paragraph 73 and in those bullet points rest upon, effectively, the Court of Appeal considering some of the material that was provided by the Crown.  They, in our submission, do not necessarily prove – and this evidence was not tested before the Court of Appeal – if we go, for instance, to the second bullet point and following, those were matters which would properly be the subject of expert evidence, particularly in relation to whether his phone was off or not; the fact that calls were not made between 9.52 and 12.27 am is also important.

I went before, your Honours, about the telephone call Jason Baxter says he has at 11.30.  That is not in the phone records.  So far as the third bullet point that the Court of Appeal relied upon:

Jason Baxter’s accounts . . . are . . . compromised by methamphetamine use as to provide an unstable foundation for comparison with phone records.

We make this observation:  the statement that was made by Jason Baxter to the police, his record of interview and also his evidence in‑chief was full of particular facts and circumstances.  This was not a case where he claimed to have no memory of his movements of that day.  They might have been compromised, but the point of having phone records is that you are able to anchor and challenge a witness’s account, and in this case there may have been an opportunity to expose a further inconsistent statement between his evidence at trial, his statement and his record of interview.  So, in our submission, that is, in effect, what has been lost.

Those are the matters, unless there is anything further I can assist your Honours with.

EDELMAN J:   Sorry, can I just understand that last submission.  That is a submission that, I think, contrary to a question that I put to you earlier, the different forensic approach that might have been taken would not have been a forensic approach to abandon a focus upon Jason Baxter if the call charge records had been disclosed, but might potentially have been a forensic approach to increase the focus, or to cross‑examine Jason Baxter with a potential to suggesting that he might have been the killer by reliance upon the call charge records.  Is that the submission?

MR EDNEY:   That is the submission, with respect.  Yes, it is, your Honour.

EDELMAN J:   I see.

GAGELER J:   Thank you, Mr Edney.

MR EDNEY:   Thank you.

GAGELER J:   Mr Boyce.

MR BOYCE:   Thank you, your Honours.  Your Honours, until puttage at the end of the cross‑examination of Jason Baxter, to which reference is made in the materials, which nominated him when we were defence counsel – under encouragement, as it were, from the judge – nominated him as an alternative suspect, and reference is made to that puttage at application book 156 at paragraph 66.

It was the defence case as crystallised as could be obtained in the record of interview of the defendant, and also in her statement to police, that the killer of her husband was one of the three persons who had attended at her house three weeks earlier, after what was known as the “splash park incident”.  That was on or about the 27 November 2016.  Objectively, it was known, largely, by dint of the admissions of the persons who had attended on that day that those three persons did not include the real Jason Baxter, no matter how he might have chosen to describe – or they might have chosen to describe themselves.  The defence case, thus, is crystalised – was that the killer of the defendant’s deceased husband was not the real Jason Baxter.

Indeed, we know that the applicant failed to pick out the real Jason Baxter in a photo board.  The applicant, in fact, picked out the ringleader of the post‑splash park invasion party, if I can put it that way, Mr Thatcher and called him Jason Baxter.  And, as was submitted below by me, the physical circumstances of the person she described matched Ben Thatcher.  That was put by me below.

GAGELER J:   The point put against you is that the prosecution case needed to exclude the reasonable possibility of Jason Baxter being the perpetrator, and these documents were relevant to that case.

MR BOYCE:   It did not – given the way in which our submission is, given the way in which the defence case was crystallised, it was not until that puttage that it was incumbent on the prosecution to do that.  But it does not mean that the prosecution cannot call, as it were, weakly probative evidence on the question of identity, which is, essentially:  who?  And where the witness says, well, not me.  But where it is non-contentious evidence, in the sense that it is not being suggested that that person is the alternative killer – a number of reasons might be so.

It is certainly relevant at a very weak probative level, but it also might be relevant insofar as evidence being called before a rural jury who might know of a person called Jason Baxter in their midst.  But once the defence is crystallised to suggest that it cannot be that person, because it was one of the splash park party, it is not, in our respectful submission, incumbent on the prosecution to – and that is until the puttage – overcome that possibility.

Insofar as the rules of disclosure, as they are described in the passage from Mallard set out in the judgment below, which referred to contested issues, or indeed to – I think it is your Honour Justice Edelman’s decision in Edwards, that speak of issues in the case or evidence of assistance to the defence by reference to crystallisation of issues from the defence.  Until that puttage was put, it is our submission that it was not incumbent for the prosecution to do so.  It was at that point ‑ ‑ ‑

EDELMAN J:   Is that because you say Jason Baxter just was not an issue until that point?

MR BOYCE:   That is right, yes.  The real Jason Baxter was not ‑ ‑ ‑

EDELMAN J:   Why did you need to disclose evidence of his alibi at all, then?

MR BOYCE:   It may be that that is so.

EDELMAN J:   Really?  You would not have even needed to disclose any of the evidence of his alibi to the defence?

MR BOYCE:   Insofar as it is not being suggested by the defence that he is the alternative suspect – and in fact, we did disclose it.  We did disclose the auditory evidence and we did disclose ‑ ‑ ‑

EDELMAN J:   Yes, but if your submission is right, would that not mean you would not need to disclose anything about Jason Baxter to the defence until the defence had disclosed to you exactly what the defence would be?

MR BOYCE:   No, no, that is not so, no.  If they do disclose the defence and it is not Jason Baxter, then that is a crystallisation.  If the defence is that it could not be Jason Baxter because it is one of the three splash park people or persons, then – and if that is so – and that is what was so in this particular case – that must be a crystallisation of the defence case relevant to the operation of the disclosure obligations.  But the fact is that, once the puttage ‑ ‑ ‑

EDELMAN J:   And does that crystallisation come from the record of interview?  Is that what you say?

MR BOYCE:   Yes, and the statement.  Yes, it did.  It was always maintained in the record of interview and in the statement that she made that the killer of her husband was one of the splash park party, and it was known objectively that that could not have been the real Jason Baxter.  When that changed and it was put to Jason Baxter that, not only were you the killer of the deceased, but you are also part of the splash park party, then soon after that the disclosure takes place.  This is really, we submit, the essence of what the court found below at application book 157, at Court of Appeal 68.  It was at that point that the issue between the defence and the prosecution – that is, that puttage – it became clear whether he was the killer.

After that, obviously enough, at application book 157, paragraph 69, we have the description of the exchange that takes place between the defence counsel and the witness, wherein the court below held – and we submit correctly – that there was disclosure of the phone records; not only their existence, but precisely what they said – referrable in why the informant had taken the view that they were not relevant.

The fact that the applicant may have misidentified or been caught out insofar as her nomination of Ben Thatcher is concerned is, in our submission, neither here nor there.  It does not bring the real Jason Baxter into the frame, wherein he was once that puttage could have occurred.  Now, insofar as it has been submitted – and I will come to the Court of Appeal’s reasoning at paragraph 73, but if I can just dwell very briefly on the position that counsel was in, because it is submitted by our friend that counsel was in, essentially, an untenable position, and his forensic decision was, in a sense, an impossible one.  That is not so, we submit, with respect.

It was clear on the material that defence counsel knew that once the police had brought Jason Baxter in on the 18th or 19th, his memory was compromised very much by the ingestion of methamphetamine.  In fact, he had asked the police to obtain his phone records.  He had requested that they obtain his phone records.  Why?  Because he could not place this call from Andrew Valli, that my friend that my friend has spoken about, which he could not place.  He wanted to have a record of it because believed that that record would exonerate him.  Those records were described, ultimately, by Senior Constable Cashman in cross‑examination and, surprisingly, he said to counsel, look, there is nothing relevant in them.  In the time leading up to and the time past there are calls, but nothing at the time or around the time of the killing; plus, insofar as they show anything to do with location, they just show him to be in Bendigo.

Now I will just make this submission, if I may.  It could have come as no surprise to defence counsel at that time that that would be Senior Constable Cashman’s evidence, given what defence counsel knew had been said by Jason Baxter in his record of interview.  That is to say, please, get my phone records, they will exonerate me, and the police officer says, well, I think we will do that, and he says:

That makes me smile –

But then, even if that is all wrong, as the court below determined – and if they were wrong about disclosure, or there had been effective disclosure at the point in time of cross‑examination of Senior Constable Cashman, they said, and the courts rightly indicated, that there was no miscarriage, either substantial or otherwise – you will find this at application book 158 at paragraph 73 – on numerous bases; one to do with the forensic decision that had been taken, and I have described that in terms of information that was on hand to defence counsel.

Second, because the submission in the court below was the forensic high point of the record’s substance – namely, that they were turned off – that could not be established by the records and so the submission was resiled from below.  Thirdly, that the phone records were so general, and Jason Baxter’s memory so compromised by drugs, that the records could have been of no use.  So, the invitation was not taken up – part of the forensic decision taken by counsel below was not to look at the records but to go to the jury, criticising the Crown investigation, or the police investigation.  But the invitation was, obviously enough, taken up by our learned friend before the Court of Appeal, and arguments fairly similar to the arguments that were made – or are being made – in fact, almost identical that are being made here were made before the court.

In one sense, insofar as potential locations of Jason Baxter are concerned, they have, in our respectful submission, the flavour of the arguments of potentiality that the Court dealt with in Edwards’ Case but nothing substantial – or substantive, I should say.  That is in terms of location.  In terms of inconsistency, it is the argument concerning Andrew Valli about a call being made at 11.30.

Now, as to the potentiality arguments that were raised by my friend in the court below, in the additional information that we have acquired by reference to my instructor’s affidavit, we put before – we analysed the material as best we could, that material concerning – in terms of phone tower records, because it had not been actually disclosed to the prosecutor to being in the informant’s records.  So, we did that analysis, and we put it before the court, and we served it on our friend, and we made the submission in the court below that by no means in terms of location could it be said, as best we could, that that evidence showed anything different to, or contrary with, what Jason Baxter had said in his record of interview.

Now, that argument was not cavilled with by our friends below because the forensic high point was not the location; the forensic high point was that the phone had been turned off.  As to the Andrew Valli point, the submissions we made below – certainly in writing – and the submission we make here is there are essentially two inconsistencies.  These are the only inconsistencies that we submit, in a substantive way, our friend makes about these records, not only with the time prior to the hearing in the court below, but in the two years that have elapsed since the decision in the court below.

As to Andrew Valli, there are two points.  One is:  Jason Baxter makes reference to one phone call at or around – he says he does not quite know when it is, from Andrew Valli, saying please – you know, do not go down to Long Gully because the place is crawling with police.  Now, there is no inconsistency there, as we submitted in the court below, because he does not say that is the only call that he made from Andrew Valli.  In fact, the call records, as we provided to our friend, show in the afternoon calls to Andrew Valli and later on calls to Andrew Valli; in particular, a call at around 12.27 am on the 19th, which we submit is obviously the call that Jason Baxter is referring to.

Insofar as it was put – or is put by my friend now – that there is an inconsistency with that, because Jason Baxter said in his evidence that that call was made at 11.30, in fact, the records accredit Jason Baxter when you look at them, because the call from Andrew Valli, according to Baxter, is the do not go down there, the places are crawling with police.  The murder is – or the killing is at around 11.30, so the place could not possibly be crawling with police at that time.  And, as my friend’s submission in the court below – and we can pick it up at paragraph 24 – application book 24, to some extent, the 11.30 aspect of it and Jason Baxter’s evidence occurs as a result of suggestion from the cross‑examiner. 

But, in fact, if Jason Baxter had been taxed on that inconsistency, which is really the only inconsistency of substance that is raised by our friends, it would have become clear that in the evidence one sees that police do not arrive at the scene until at or around midnight.  So, that he would then receive a call from Andrew Valli at or around 12.30 saying, do not go down there, is perfectly consistent, and why, we submit, it does not do anything other than to credit Jason Baxter.

So, apart from these arguments that we submit are made by our friends, and the same ones that are made below, in the face of us having analysed the phone tower evidence and put evidence about that before the court – which we submitted showed no inconsistency, and the court below seemed to accept that – there is, in our respectful submission, no argument of substance beyond it being put as a potential problem that the counsel might have done something differently.  But counsel, as we plainly submit, made a forensic choice, and an informed forensic choice, really, because he was told the content of the records.  It would have cohered with what he would have understood they would have had from the way in which Jason Baxter described it in his record of interview.  He made the forensic – the irrational forensic choice to proceed ahead with the trial in the matter in which he did. 

So, it is for that reason we submit, or for those reasons we submit, that even if our submission – in the same way as the court below – is wrong

on the question of disclosure, we do not conceive that we are wrong, given the way in which the defence had been crystallised prior to the puttage, that the court is plainly correct below – whereas at paragraph 73 of the judgment below, wherein it is found that there was no miscarriage of justice or substantial miscarriage of justice; and there has been no reason, in our respectful submission, to gainsay that conclusion, as put by our friends this morning.

For those reasons, we would submit the application for special leave should be refused.  If the Court pleases.

GAGELER J:   Thank you, Mr Boyce.  Mr Edney, do you have a reply?

MR EDNEY:   Yes, I do.  Just a few matters, if I may.  The issue that really needs to be addressed, in our submission, is that, insofar as relevance is concerned, the relevance argument was dealt with in the Court of Appeal on the basis that what the applicant had said in the record of interview – a lengthy record of interview – when she was shown a photo board photograph of Jason Baxter.  In our submission, that type of evidence has inherent fragilities and is inherently unreliable.  So, to use that as the departure point, in our submission, creates a dangerous precedent about how relevance is to be assessed by reference to what an accused says in his or her record of interview.

Insofar as the defence case was only crystallised, it is said, on 6 November, that is not the case if your Honours consider the history of the matter, particularly seeking to question the alibi witnesses of Jason Baxter and cross‑examining Jason Baxter.  Insofar as what the defence case was, in the opening address or opening reply by defence counsel, he said and asked the jury to focus on the evidence of Jason Baxter.  Jason Baxter was clearly an issue from the very start and, in our submission, remained throughout the whole of the trial.

GAGELER J:   How is relevance in the context of section 110 – the hand‑up brief – how is relevance assessed at that point?

MR EDNEY:   That is, I suppose, one of the special leave questions we pose, how relevance is to be determined.  At that point in time, it would be, in our submission, the material that had been assembled in the case to date.  So, in this particular case, as part of the disclosure requirements, the informant provided a document and a folder of 1,088 pages of disclosure.  Jason Baxter was in that disclosure bundle.  His call charge records were not.  His attendance at the police station was provided.  His prior convictions were provided. 

So, this was a case where the Crown provided the statement, the record of interview, his attendance notes and his prior convictions, but did not provide the call charge records at that time as well.  And there has never been an adequate explanation as to why they were not provided.  Insofar as relevance is concerned, the issue of relevance and identity and placement of Jason Baxter was relevant to both parties and both cases.

Those are the matters.

GAGELER J:   Yes, thank you.  We will adjourn to consider this matter.

AT 12.28 PM SHORT ADJOURNMENT

UPON RESUMING AT 12.31 PM:

GAGELER J:   We are not persuaded that there is a sufficient prospect of establishing that the prior non‑disclosure of the telephone records gave rise to a miscarriage of justice to warrant the grant of special leave to appeal.  We grant the necessary extension of time for the filing of the application, however, we refuse special leave to appeal.

The Court will now adjourn until 1.30 pm.

AT 12.31 PM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED