Day 177 - 26 Oct 95 - Page 51


     
     1        in sugar and sodium content with the aim of people
     2        developing an addiction for it".  I mean, this is not
     3        careful drafting, but you see what I am suggesting.
     4
     5   MR. RAMPTON:  I can see that.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That might clearly be thought to be
     8        defamatory.
     9
    10   MR. RAMPTON:  I can see that, my Lord, but that is only if one
    11        separates it from the rest of the context.  The passage
    12        starts with "paying for the habit", and it has embedded in
    13        it the words "fake food" and it is under a headline
    14        "McProfits" and a whole lot of other stuff which is all
    15        directed, including the front cover of the leaflet itself,
    16        to the conclusion that McDonald's cynically exploit the
    17        world in which they operate because they are only
    18        interested in making money out of it.  So, at the very
    19        least, this passage fuels the suggestion that McDonald's
    20        are careless of their customers' health.
    21
    22   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What I have made is that H is really an
    23        allegation of a defamatory meaning of exploitation of
    24        customers for profit and carelessness as to their good
    25        health.
    26
    27   MR. RAMPTON:  I have to say, and I have not always agreed with
    28        the way these meanings have been put, but I have to say in
    29        defence of the pleader that that is how I read it when
    30        I read it.  I thought that was what was alleged - it was an
    31        allegation of what one might call cynical exploitation for
    32        the sake of profit.
    33
    34   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  I felt I ought to mention G and H
    35        because I think everyone has been concentrating on F, but
    36        they are there and pleaded so one needs to know ----
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, that is certainly right, and in the end
    39         -- and I must say if this was a jury case, I know it is
    40        not, but if it were a jury case one would be thinking and
    41        probably saying that the precise shade of each of the
    42        pleaded meanings probably does not matter a row of beans,
    43        because what matters at the end of it is the impression
    44        which the jury has in its mind of what this leaflet is
    45        telling the world about McDonald's.  Now, of course, they
    46        are separate topics and the jury would have to make a
    47        separate decision as to the meaning on each part of the
    48        leaflet, though it would use the whole context, the whole
    49        of the leaflet, in order to arrive at that decision for
    50        each part. 
    51 
    52        But what it would not do, and I would not invite it to do 
    53        and I doubt the judge would in a jury trial, is to go
    54        through the meanings line by line and ask them to ask
    55        themselves whether it means precisely this or that.  If the
    56        jury, in their deliberations, translated H into the sort of
    57        form which your Lordship has just written down, then that
    58        would be completely unobjectionable.  They are, after all,
    59        the masters of meaning and the case does ----
    60

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