Maya Forstater Tribunal March 2022- Thread 2

[Sophoclesthefox]

Forgive the presumption, @Mforstater, but you’re probably busy in the pub right now, or passing on all of the fan mail to you legal team so I’ve made a new thread to carry on the fascinating discussion.

Round up your cats, rabbits and weasels, and let’s go!

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From thread one, here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

Hi all,

Thank you so much for all your support: emotional, intellectual, financial, spiritual(!) reading the Mumsnet feminism board is where this all started for me!

The case starts tomorrow.

It is all online. If you want to watch you need to email the tribunal for a log in to [email protected]

It kicks off at 10am - the first bit will be "admin" between the judges and the lawyers working out the timings, issues and any reporting restrictions hmm.

Once that is all sorted the judge and the panel will go away to read (probably for the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday)

I will most likely give evidence Wednesday and Thursday.

@tribunaltweets will be tweeting the whole thing (assuming they get permission from the judge)

Links to papers will go up throughout the case at www.hiyamaya.net.

Any other questions I am happy to answer them (apart from the ones where I have to say "that is for the tribunal to hear"...)

I have made a spectators guide with FAQs etc here

Lots of love

Maya

BC says the respondents should be on notice that if the application to disclose new stuff is allowed, BC position will be that the choice is theirs and they should suffer the consequences in terms of timing. Can't expect cross-examination time to be reduced.

Time can come out of CGD's closing submissions, if they want to pursue (BC says). And BC says depending on how this goes, there may be costs consequences.

I think "markers" are effectively BC telling the tribunal panel that there are important issues they need to keep in mind in what they decide to do, and if they don't they might trigger undesirable consequences, up to triggering the claimant needing to appeal to the High Court.

OD submits that it should be dealt with today, but after AG's evidence and doesn't think it is as significant as BC thinks. OD thinks it's regrettable that there is a new submission but thinks it should be dealt with as a matter of routine.

So.. can somebody explain in laywoman's terms what is BC'send game in this? I understand he wants to discredit CGD and give himself a courtroom timing/costs advantage but is there more to it than that?

Moving to AG's evidence first.

Sounds as if CGD have now (at 8am this morning) supplied more evidence — things that ought to have been disclosed previously and which, if accepted into evidence, will take extra time to challenge. And all extra time taken to cross-examine should come out of CGD's allocation/ pocket.

The CGD website has been mentioned.

EJ talking about when the judgment might be expected. He doesn't think it will be a long, long time.

Thank goodness for Tabby!

Just caught up with both threads.

Thanks everyone for the updates and the commentary .

And good luck Maya!

Whatever the result, CGD is finished as a going concern. I don't think even a name change will save it. It's a toxic brand now. Worse, they've managed to impact on The Gates Foundation, and that won't go down well.

Yesterday's proceedings were just a calamity. Why haven't they thrown the towel in already?

My link has just come through, I will try to join at lunch time

Wondering if this is just a tactical manoeuvre and that BC's markers have been about drawing attention to the judge that that games are being played. I have been through a case (civil court) where every day there'd be a new disclosure or similar in order to try and throw my barrister off his stride.

AG evidence:

BC: We were looking at the initial responses to the complaints received by LE. You tell us that on around 2 Oct more members of the fundraising team in Wash/London spoke in person to Ag.

AG: Yes.

BC: Were they complainants 1-4.

AG: No, 1-3

BC: Clear there was plenty of discussion?

AG:Yes.

BC: Wider discussion?

AG: No.

BC: You didn't make a note?

AG: No. They had been in touch with LE.

BC: It's not something referred to in any other correspondence at the time?

AG: No.

BC: What they said, you now say, is that they were hurt and offended and they saw it as misgendering, stating that a man's feeling etc has no basis in etc

BC: Did you check whether this was accurate?

AG: Yes. I looked at the top of the thread and saw they were speaking about PB, but did not engage with exactly the meaning.

BC: So was it apparent to you that in fact PB didn't ID as a woman?

AG: I don't think I looked carefully at PB

BC: The statement (Man's feeling) is simply a statement of core belief, isn't it?

AG: I understand that now. A light reading.

BC: You thought it would be difficult to say that she had crossed any CGD lines, didn't you?

AG: Yes.

BC: Later exchanges... You see Mr Easley proposing a first draft of an email in which he was proposing a fairly interventionist approach in restricting was MF could say?

AG: Yes

BC: Your response was that you intervened to say you were concerned about directing social media use and views. It would get us into policing people.

BC says AG is recognising that other staff use social nedia in a way that is robust and humorous?

AG: Yes.

BC: They criticise other people and ideas?

AG: Some do, but our values suggest they shouldn't make ad hom attacks.

BC: Michael Sandfur making a comment to someone that their paper was 'fake news', yes?

AG asks to see.

BC corrects name: Justin Sanfur (?)

Some discussion of this incident that I don't fully understand, but it's about what was normal in the dev community and CGD. A CGD employee has called someone else's work fake news.

Twitter is basically a medium where this sort of language and tone is common from CGD people and development people.

AG says this particular incident is like this, yes.

BC says that sort of language and tone was common.

AG says she thinks yes, but it's different because it's about a specific paper. But BC is right, that language was used.

Is she agreeing with BC that the language and tone was common?

Yes

She then recognises that in her email on 2 Oct

Yes.

BC: So you are also recognising that if you took a different line with MF, that would single her out inconsistently. Agree?

AG: Yes.

In my experience this kind of thing happens in disclosure-heavy cases but BC is raising the important point that the extremely late arrival of the documents suggests that the solicitors responsible have not been making the disclosure they committed to do and so all kinds of stuff might be missing.

It suggests that the documents came to light as a result of the solicitors searching over the past day or so in response to BC's cross-examination of the witnesses, in other words, they'll meet their commitments when it suits CGD rather than to enable the proper conduct of the case.

BC says we can see other people contributing to this discussion reinforcing your point. There are examples of how other people say things like it's a worry that it's not a policy that people have to publicly note their position is different from CGD's.

BC reminds AG that people did object publicly to aspects of this same discussion. They challenged CGD's policy on diverse panels.

AG: Yes but there is a policy about having fellows disclose that their views aren't CGD's views.

BC: Where? Before this case?

AG: It was always provided as guidance.

BC: These documents seem to suggest the opposite.

AG: We wouldn't have them do this about a specific position but we did ask them to do it generally.

BC:

BC again shows internally that people didn't know this was the guidance.

AG argues it was about the bio/specific tweets.

BC says it sounded much more general than that.

BC says an earlier email from LE about how to respond to MF tweets and complaints, after suggesting some parameters for a social policy, he says, maybe we should ask them to add a disclaimer. This suggests the policy didn't already exist.

AG: We expected people to do it and most people did, but you could interpret it your way.

BC: It's the only sensible interpretation, isn't it?

AG says that isn't her interpretation and she was clear that people needed to do this as part of their bio.

BC: But you can't point to anything that says this?

AG: No.

BC: