Day 278 - 11 Jul 96 - Page 39


     
     1        doing that.  I have seen this in various places, and it is
     2        like, just because we cannot get, we cannot get a witness
     3        from over in Brazil to come over and say that, it does not
     4        mean that is it not true.  It is, like I said before.
     5
     6   Q.   But you have been in contact with the man who wrote the
     7        book have you not?
     8        A.  Yes Doug Shane, yes.  I don't know whether he was
     9        asked.  I mean, I did not speak to him.  Mr. Morris spoke
    10        to him so I don't know what he was asked about.  It was
    11        written, obviously, 16 years -- is it 16?  No, sorry, about
    12        11 years previously, and I know Mr. Morris did ask him for
    13        who he had spoken to and things like that, but a lot of
    14        them he had lost contact with and so on.
    15
    16   Q.   Correct me if I am wrong, I do not have any evidence that
    17        McDonald's has ever owned a single cow in Brazil do I?
    18        A.  You don't have any evidence in this court but that does
    19        not mean that it does not exist.  This is what I was trying
    20        to explain before about the counterclaim.  The fact that,
    21        say, for example, we had not had a witness about McDonald's
    22        and the food poisoning outbreak in Preston and McDonald's
    23        had not made the admission, the fact that we did not have a
    24        witness would not mean that McDonald's were not responsible
    25        for the food poisoning outbreak, it would just mean that we
    26        had not been able to make contact with the necessary
    27        person.
    28
    29             And as far as I am concerned, that is the situation
    30        now, because of our lack of resources, our lack of
    31        experience in how to, you know, take witness statements, it
    32        has all been very haphazard and we have just phoned up
    33        people and said, "Look, can you write down your
    34        experiences".  We have never gone to interview people, to
    35        take detailed statements to find out exactly what they
    36        know.  We have just relied on them putting down what they
    37        remember and what they think is relevant.  It is something
    38        that has been said in a lot of places, and I personally
    39        believe it.
    40
    41   Q.   Yes.  Well, what else did you want to deal with; is there
    42        anything more you wanted to say about what you were asked
    43        in cross-examination about the rainforest?
    44        A.  I don't think there is.
    45
    46   Q.   No.
    47        A.  I mean, the documents, there are lots of other
    48        references to McDonald's in the rainforest bundles.  I have
    49        not -- I mean, I have read them all at various times, some
    50        of them before the writ some of them after the writs.  I
    51        have not had time to go through everything to, you know, to
    52        be able to point them all out.  And I know I cannot blame
    53        anybody else for that, but it is just a fact of having such
    54        a big case as a litigant in person and, you know, having so
    55        much to do and not having the time to do everything that
    56        needs to be done.
    57
    58   Q.   Yes.  Well, what else do you want to tell me in the
    59        equivalent of re-examination as it were?
    60        A.  There is a couple of things about the Mcspotlight

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