Day 139 - 21 Jun 95 - Page 52


     
     1        franchise?
     2        A.  None.
     3
     4   Q.   Who bought it?
     5        A.  None.  We were informed after the fact what he had
     6        done.  My Lord, the environment is we were defaulting him,
     7        we were in court.  Other than court proceedings under way
     8        we had no contact with him.  Under the rules of default, he
     9        continued to operate with the arch, if you will, but we had
    10        no contact with him and no contact other than through the
    11        litigation and the lawyers, if you will, and then the next
    12        thing we know is that Mr. Miller is calling us saying that
    13        he had bought from Mr. Gibson.
    14
    15   Q.   When did you find that out?  Was that shortly after he had
    16        bought the terminated franchise?
    17        A.  I cannot say that with certainty because I do not
    18        really know the exact timing of when he bought the
    19        franchise.  As a matter of fact, I have to make some
    20        assumptions which I can do, and that is we first became
    21        aware of the situation after the stores were closed because
    22        of the labour dispute.  When I got down there, it was
    23        obvious to me that Mr. Miller had already made some
    24        substantial investment in the buildings and in the
    25        equipment and things such as that, so a period of time had
    26        been involved where we did not know about the transfer of
    27        ownership, it had been kept from us.
    28
    29   Q.   When you terminated Mr. Gibson's franchise, what did you
    30        expect to happen?
    31        A.  We hoped that the arches, McDonald's arches, would be
    32        removed from the building.  He could operate a Hamburg
    33        restaurant of his own name, any other name, or competitor's
    34        name, but it should not operate as a McDonald's.
    35
    36   Q.   But nobody from McDonald's went down there to see whether
    37        that had happened?
    38        A.  I think I mentioned there are legal proceedings under
    39        way to try to make that happen.
    40
    41   MR. MORRIS:  When legal proceedings are going on, it would be
    42        wrong for you to go and interfere or be around?
    43
    44   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can I understand the position.  I am not
    45        quite sure where we are going for the moment, but let me
    46        understand the situation before I ask about that.  As
    47        I understand it, what you were saying this morning is you
    48        thought that if you terminated a franchise you had to go to
    49        court to do that?
    50        A.  Unless there is a voluntarily agreement, my Lord. 
    51 
    52   Q.   When you say "you go to court", are you going to court just 
    53        to get the court's approval of the termination, or are you
    54        going to court to get an order preventing your licensee
    55        from putting himself forward as a McDonald's restaurant or
    56        something like that?
    57        A.  Essentially what we are doing, my Lord, is trying to
    58        get our name removed from the building and preclude the
    59        operator from using ----
    60

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