Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 11
1 MS. STEEL: It is like the thing with smoking, because if you
2 smoke a cigarette you may not get cancer, but smoking is
3 said to be a cause of cancer. The way Plaintiffs now want
4 to plead implies that if you eat a McDonald's meal you are
5 likely to get cancer from that meal, which is completely
6 different to what was pleaded before and, obviously, to
7 what is actually said in the leaflet and what we have
8 prepared upon.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: At the end of the day, I may be with you on
11 that. Because the word "diet" is actually used in the
12 text, it may be that at the end of the day I would prefer
13 -- I stress "may" -- some intermediate meaning of the kind
14 which I have just expounded, rather than the
15 top-of-the-range meaning, if I can describe it that way,
16 which the Plaintiffs wish to put in by amendment. In a
17 sense, that is another consideration.
18
19 MS. STEEL: To me, the implication of F1 is that the individual
20 meals are responsible for causing cancers of the breast and
21 bowel and heart disease in their customers, as opposed to
22 the nutritional content which relates to diet overall.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You do not want to abandon the contention
25 that a modified meaning such as the one I have put to you
26 is justified, do you?
27
28 MS. STEEL: I think the point is that we think that this is
29 vastly stronger and that if this had been pleaded in the
30 first place we might very well have gone about preparing
31 the whole case in a very different manner.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I would like you in your own time, when it is
34 appropriate, to do that. No doubt, you will help me on
35 that because I would like to know in what way you think you
36 suffered, if one looks at Dr. Barnard's statements and his
37 evidence, Mr. Cannon's statements and his evidence, and
38 Professor Crawford's statements and his evidence, and what
39 you were seeking to obtain by way of cross-examination.
40
41 MS. STEEL: We were advised to ask our witnesses
42 about "cause". That was two or three days before they were
43 due to give evidence, which is entirely different
44 from having prepared your case on that basis and asked them
45 to look into specifically "cause" and -----
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am anxious not to enter into a debate which
48 takes you off your line of argument, but what is suggested
49 is that in July you were asking the Plaintiffs' witnesses
50 about "cause".
51
52 MS. STEEL: Looking through the transcripts, I do not actually
53 feel that we asked Mr. Wheelock very many questions
54 about "cause", and where we did ask about "cause", it was
55 because "cause" is one type of link, in much the same way
56 as we asked about other types of link, about statistical
57 associations, and things like that.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It might be thought that you asked Dr. Arnott
60 about "cause" before you received a notice of any
