POL00069612 - Telephone Attendance Note re Mr Lee Castleton Subpostmaster Litigation

Evidence on official site

POL00069612
POL00069612

bed eo

Telephone attendance

Client: Royal Mail Group PLC Sub Postmaster Litigation

Matter: Mr Lee Castleton Matter no: 348035.134

Attending: Tom Beazer

Name: Stephen Dilley Location: N/A Date: 7 September 2006

Start time: Units:

I had a telephone conversation with Tom Beazer to discuss strategy in view of Video's letter
about the proposed costs of £62,000 in relation to the Accountancy Report. Also Tom
expressing his concerns that the expert said that they found some early indications of
possible problems with Horizon from their initial view of the electronic information. They say
that Horizon should show the double nature of the transaction e.g. sale of stamp and receipt
of cash by customer. However, they said January is out by £2.47 and February by £4.05.
My comment to Tom is that I thought those amounts were quite small and that there will
probably turn out to be a rational explanation because I have met Fujitsu and they are
utterly convinced of the integrity of their system and really it is just an electronic calculator
so it is only as good as the person who inputs information into it.

Explaining to Tom that I had had a conversation with Castleton’s solicitors earlier this week
and they said they had not ruled out ADR but believed the whole case will turn on what
experts say and there is therefore no purpose in having ADR until their expert (hopefully for
them) comes up with something to win the case for them. Tom asked me if I thought that
Castleton had taken the money for himself and I said that he may not have done and may
have mixed it with the car auction money, but this is just a hypothesis. However he has
persuaded himself for one reason or another that the computers must be at fault.

Agreeing with Tom that the strategy should be that we pick up the phone to Lee Castleton’s
solicitors, point out to them that Castleton has made an error analysing the cash account
(without necessarily disclosing the Fujitsu analysis), tell them what our accountancy expert
alone is going to cost and invite them to ADR before we instruct an expert. Tom agreed and
we agreed that we would speak to Counsel about this and Mandy about it on Monday.

Time engaged - 30 mins.

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