Day 177 - 26 Oct 95 - Page 58
1 at least to reflect probability rather than possibility.
2 In fact, we would say (as I have already said repeatedly),
3 the flavour of the leaflet is one of certainty.
4
5 The reason that I am troubled about the passage in your
6 Lordship's proposal which introduces diet as a root to
7 illness, which it does, is that it attempts a
8 reconciliation, or perhaps I had better say resolution of
9 the conflation or confusion, the known sequitur, about food
10 and diet which is to be found in the leaflet itself.
11
12 Unless the reader is to be thought of as somebody having an
13 out of the ordinary knowledge of nutrition, that resolution
14 or reconciliation would not be attempted by the reader. He
15 is met with a passage in a leaflet, a polemic leaflet,
16 which tells him that the food is dangerous. Unless he sits
17 down and puzzles it out and asks his doctor, he is not
18 going to see that there is any break in the chain between
19 consumption of hamburgers and the onset of the disease.
20
21 So, my Lord, we would respectfully suggest that if this
22 meaning is preferred to the meaning we have pleaded, and I
23 am not suggesting that we accept it should be, the right
24 thing to do would be to cross out the words after "it" and
25 beginning with the "may", down to the words "minerals with
26 the" in the third line, so as to lose the whole of the
27 second and third lines, and to insert the words before
28 "very real risk carries the", so that it read:
29 "McDonald's food is unhealthy because eating it carries
30 the very real risk that you will suffer cancer of the
31 breast or bowel or heart disease as a result, and that
32 although McDonald's know or ought to know this they do not"
33 and so on and so forth. That, we feel, would faithfully
34 reflect the message which the ordinary person, with an
35 ordinary knowledge of the world and without specialised
36 information about the relationship between food and diet,
37 would derive from this leaflet in its proper context.
38
39 I hope I can say those things without treading on your
40 Lordship's toes.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Certainly not, because the whole point of
43 mentioning it -- admittedly I may have been speaking more
44 directly to Ms. Steel and Mr. Morris -- was to give
45 everyone an ample opportunity to knock it down.
46
47 MR. RAMPTON: I am afraid I think it ought to be -- I feel that
48 it ought to be knocked down at any rate as far as that.
49 Can I, in aid of that then, finally -- and I have finished
50 now -- hand up and to the Defendants those two different
51 edited versions - one what I call the full edited version.
52 Your Lordship will see that I have also crossed out the
53 words "or ought to know". I do not mind if your Lordship
54 ignores that because I do not think it is a big point at
55 all. (Handed). Behind that with a "2" in the right-hand
56 corner is what I would call the unedited bit, which leaves
57 in the reference to diet which I would, myself -- we,
58 ourselves, would much rather see it removed---
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
