Counsel for the Community Pharmacy Action Group has complained to the Restrictive Practices Court (RPC) that its demands are jeopardising the fair presentation of the CPAG's case. Mr Mark Cran, QC, told the court on October 26 that he believed that its request that the evidence of trade witnesses should be reduced to propositions of fact and that their expert opinions should be excluded was outside its powers. Pointing out that the RPC had not made this demand in any previous case, Mr Cran said: "Such evidence has been admitted in all other cases before this court which we have been able to find and, indeed, has prevailed with the court in many of those cases." He went on: "All the evidence given by [CPAG's] witnesses is very relevant and deserves full and proper consideration from the court. I regret to say that there is the greatest concern that this evidence is not receiving that consideration." The request to produce digested statements was unprecedented, Mr Cran told the court. There was no provision in the civil procedure rules for such an exercise and the court was not subject to those rules in any case. There was clear law that the court had no discretion to exclude evidence which was relevant and admissible under common law. Mr Cran also told the court that the workload its demands were placing on the CPAG's legal team was untenable and that it faced an uneven task. The CPAG had 39 witnesses, while the director general of fair trading had just six. "The hours worked have been extraordinary and are unsustainable," the court was told. "We do not complain at all of being asked questions by the court, but the court has shown scant appreciation of the time it takes to answer them." The judge (Mr Justice Lightman) declined to respond to Mr Cran's complaint, although he said that any future application for more time to ease a perceived pressure on the CPAG's team of five counsel would be considered carefully and sympathetically.