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Message
From: Ken McCalli GRO
on behalf of — Ken McCall
Sent: 13/05/2019 6:
To: Alisdair Cameron Thomas Cooper
: Watts, Alan I i 7y
Subject: Re: Legally privileged and confidential - GLO
Al
Many thanks for your update email
lam in agreement with your line of thinking and indeed looking at another QC to front
From Wednesday onwards I will be in the US but still fully contactable by email
Best regards
Ken
Alisdair Cameron <_
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 9:51 am
To: Tim Parker; Thomas Cooper; Ken McCall; Watts, Alan; Ben Foat
Subject: Legally privileged and confidential - GLO
Following the news at the weekend we met this morning. I have set out below the outcomes of that
conversation. If the sub-committee wants to have a call arranged, please let me know. Kind regards Al
Mr Coulson has supported the logic of Mr Fraser’s position and denied our appeal on the recusal.
The recusal argument is finished.
Our appeal on the common issues will go ahead.
We will see Mr Fraser this morning to support the claimamts’ request to delay the appeal hearing to
234 so they have more time to prepare. We do need to adjust our position post the Coulson findings
and will be seeking to share grounds for appeal this Thursday, giving the Claimants a week to prepare.
Mr Fraser could demand more urgency — we originally said today - which would make life difficult but it
would be odd if we didn’t want to consider Mr Coulson’s judgement...
5. Assuming Mr Fraser turns the appeal down, it may well be Mr Coulson who would adjudicate whether
we can appeal on the common issues trial. He might also be the presiding judge if an appeal went
ahead. We can and are likely to ask for three judges to decide on whether we can appeal: this is
unusual but within our rights and not considered controversial. However, it is unclear how that
decision would be made and it may still be Mr Coulson....While the legal teams are all convinced that
the legal interpretations are so new and important that we will be able to appeal, I am anxious.
6. Weare therefore re-writing the common issues appeal now to strip out any “recusal lite” argument
and to minimise the findings of fact only to those things that directly support one of the contractual
interpretation arguments, to give ourselves the best opportunity to be heard and to demonstrate to
Mr Coulson that we have listened.
PwNrR
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7. This is against the advice of David Cavender who is advising us to stick to our guns. He does not feel like
the right person to be fronting the appeal, which HS are reviewing — depending on the timetable,
another QC may front it with his support or there could be a complete handover over time.
8. Weare briefly communicating with our senior leadership team but in the absence of any media
coverage do not plan to communicate further.
9. Our immediate focus, which we will discuss at May Board, will be how we best prepare for a very bad
Horizon verdict, which is inevitable, both because the recual failed and because our witnesses did
badly in court before the pause. Our job is to reassure Postmasters to carry on, business as usual, by
demonstrating that Horizon works today, communicating a more transparent process for managing
new differences and separately for managing historical claims. We are currently planning to announce
this before the judgement.
10. We are also working on how we put together a settlement team and process for after the Horizon trail.
Al Cameron
Interim Chief Executive
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
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