Day 313 - 13 Dec 96 - Page 39
1 malice or not?
2
3 MS. STEEL: No, I am about to make a legal point. We would say
4 that our conduct in court is consistent with good faith and
5 with the serious concern at the consequences of the case.
6 We would say that it is... Well, I mean, it is a
7 completely worthless point, but if our conduct in court is
8 to be taken into account then so should Mr. Rampton's be
9 taken into account when weighing up the Plaintiffs' motives
10 and state of mind; for example, continual muttering, the
11 repeated attempts to suggest that there was some sort of
12 vegetarian conspiracy amongst the defence witnesses, the
13 calling of Sue Dibb, the 'anti-brigade' in his summing up,
14 and, for example, the gratuitous insult on day 100,
15 page 17, line 18, when Mr. Morris was asking some question
16 about food poisoning he made some comment about people
17 having been poisoned by the Defendants, despite the fact
18 that it was... Well, it was not relevant to any issue, and
19 it was just completely rubbish. It was just an attempted
20 slur, basically. That was what Mr. Rampton said.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: All this is argument on matters of fact and
23 what conclusions I should draw from the evidence.
24
25 MS. STEEL: It is something that came up and it has never been
26 pleaded that the Plaintiffs were going to bring this up.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do try and restrict yourself to any argument
29 on a point of law now. Malice only arises in relation to
30 fair comment, if there is comment in this leaflet, and at
31 the moment you have not even... I thought I had understood
32 what you said was comment, and Mr. Morris said before we
33 broke off that you were going to tell me what in the
34 leaflet was comment. At the moment, it seems to me that
35 there are two or three things only among all the statements
36 made in this leaflet which might be said to be comment
37 rather than statements of fact or alleged fact. All this
38 business of whether it is fair or not, and whether if it is
39 comment it was made maliciously or not, just does not arise
40 unless it is comment in the first place rather than a
41 statement of alleged fact.
42
43 MS. STEEL: We are going to deal with those. We are trying to
44 get through things in the most quick way possible, so...
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, I think you must at some stage... I
47 mean, from the very beginning of this case so much has been
48 said about your right to comment and here we are on day 313
49 and you have not told me where the comment is yet.
50
51 MS. STEEL: We did plead originally various comments, and we
52 have done some parts as we have gone through. The thing is
53 that we are not legal professionals.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I know, and that is why I have not pressed you
56 on it, but I said that if you really want me to find that
57 any of this is comment, or want me to turn my mind to the
58 question whether it is comment rather than statement of
59 alleged fact, you must just list.
60
