He said that the hangers with the bevelled edge had been in production for a very long time and had superseded the older style which had been in production in about the 1940's. An old fashioned hammer would have been around for a long time by 1976, and was quite likely to have sustained the type of damage that was apparently the one that he had got with the chip on it, and that was one of the defects with this type of implement. The hammer however that had made the marks on the pipe was apparently in good condition and had not been damaged in that way.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am just about to come to what I think Mr. Edis described yesterday as the heavy material, so perhaps we can do that after a short break. Quarter-past to twenty-past, please.
(The jury withdrew from court)
(The court adjourned)
MR. JUSTICE MCCOMBE: Well, ladies and gentlemen, rocks. The underlying science was remarkably sophisticated, was it not, and an awe inspiring quality of learning to which I am sure none of us aspired to in O level science, whatever we did, but it is of a nature that I have tried to explain to you earlier on. It is expert evidence, and I thought and you may have thought that the scientists reduced it to manageable quality and when we got used to it, the salient points came through quick clearly and we began to understand the differences between what the scientists were saying. I am going to remind you of some of the prominent features of what they said, and all these expressions that certainly when I looked at the reports which were written and I saw it written, I thought will we ever understand that, but I think as the days have gone by, you must not be shocked by it. So I will do my best to summarise what we all learnt.