Case No. HT-11-503

74.A number of these unanswered questions (What work was actually done? What was actually paid?) could have been answered by the contractors themselves. However, Brit Inns chose not to adduce any evidence from any of the contractors. Instead, it was Mr Thomas who spoke to a number of them on the telephone, and extrapolated answers to at least some of these questions from what he was told.75.Although he used some of Mr Thomas’ figures in his own calculations (see below), Mr Plewman criticised Mr Thomas because he was relying on what he was told by the contractors over the telephone about what they had done, sometimes years after the event. That criticism ignores the fact that Brit Inns could have obtained much better evidence from these contractors but chose not to. Thus, however unsatisfactory it may be, these conversations represent the best evidence about what happened, because they contain more details than the invoices. And that also provides an answer to the criticism that sometimes Mr Thomas’ figures were calculated without any reference to the relevant contractors, because they were not obtainable. Mr Thomas can hardly be criticised because he was not able to fill all the gaps in the material provided by Brit Inns.