Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 46
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2 MR. RAMPTON: And if the defamatory sting of the allegation is
3 that, faced with a complaint by McDonald's, the Defendants
4 made no reasonable response, but just went on publishing
5 their own defamations, then there is, at the very least, a
6 substantial ground for saying that McDonald's were entitled
7 to believe that was true. I go further and say that it is
8 true; and the reason that I say that is this -- and this is
9 the bit that I wanted to add, and it fits most neatly,
10 my Lord, at the end of paragraph 3.3 on page 5 of the
11 written submissions.
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Wait a moment, please. (Pause)
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15 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, before I just say what I am going to say,
16 Mrs. Brinley-Codd points out to me that, in fact, in a
17 London Greenpeace leaflet -- I said there was no evidence
18 to support what McDonald's believed -- in pink 1A, tab 27,
19 which is a London Greenpeace document of 1988, at
20 page 55 ---
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22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: -- there is an anti-McDonald's campaign 1988
25 "Putting the boot in Big Mac"; and it is at the 59th
26 minute of the 11th hour, I am sorry, but here it is. On
27 the second page, one finds this -- I had better start on
28 the first page at the bottom.
29
30 "While we can quite understand why Veggies had to take this
31 approach, London Greenpeace believes it would be
32 unnecessary and wrong for local groups who formed the
33 backbone of the anti-McDonald's campaign to follow suit:
34 firstly, because local groups are not limited companies,
35 they are free associations, they are immune from
36 prosecution. Only individuals" -- and now I go to the
37 second page -- "within the group can be taken to court.
38 But McDonald's will then have to prove that those
39 individuals were responsible for writing and/or
40 distributing leaflets. In practice this is virtually
41 impossible to do. Proof of this is the fact that they have
42 never taken legal action against London Greenpeace who
43 initiated the anti-McDonald's campaign four years ago and
44 who have distributed tens of thousands of leaflets. We
45 received (that is London Greenpeace) a threatening letter
46 from them right at the beginning, but replied saying that
47 we would continue and they could do what they liked. We
48 never heard from them again."
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50 If that is not the foundation for an honest belief (if not
51 the absolute truth) that complaint had been made about the
52 leaflet right at the beginning, then I do not know what
53 is. And, of course, no response has been given, and they
54 triumphantly proclaim their virtue in continuing to
55 publish, despite that complaint.
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57 MR. MORRIS: It does say we replied, "we" being the word used
58 there.
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60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I was going to say: suppose I went all along
