Day 313 - 13 Dec 96 - Page 24


     
     1        had been applying for documents about that from Germany and
     2        it had been stated pre-trial that Dr. Schumm would be
     3        coming, their witness on that matter, and therefore there
     4        was no need for discovery, and in the event he was not
     5        called.  When we persisted with, I think either discovery
     6        or interrogatories, on the matter -- no, when we persisted
     7        on that...  I do not know, I cannot remember now, but the
     8        point was that Mr. Nicholson stated in an interrogatory
     9        that the German McDonald's had never used any Brazilian
    10        soya.  He said, no, to the best of his belief, which of
    11        course is not true and established to be not true through
    12        the evidence of Mr. Cesca and just general analysis of
    13        Dr. Schumm's statement.
    14
    15        So, that is something where we believe, obviously,
    16        documentation would have cleared that all up, and we may
    17        have been left with an unsafe, inaccurate interrogatory
    18        answer.
    19
    20        Secondly, on the rainforest issue of maps.  It was only due
    21        to a casual remark by Dr. Gonzales that we established
    22        there was a map, which is a very important map, in Brazil
    23        which we had no discovery, and also it was only because
    24        Mr. Cesca happened to bring some documents in a brief case
    25        that we got the maps and the documentation relating to
    26        Costa Rica and Guatemala, despite the fact that he had
    27        sworn an affidavit saying there was not any relevant
    28        documentation.
    29
    30        So, again, we do feel that the discovery on rainforest has
    31        been almost non-existent and we have only got certain
    32        documents through strenuous efforts and luck, for example
    33        about the UK importation of Brazilian beef.
    34
    35        The last thing I want to say about the documentation is
    36        that the absolutely key document of McDonald's own
    37        investigation into the death of Mark Hopkins which had a
    38        lot of, we would say, admissions about lack of safety in
    39        the Company on the company floor, shop floor, had not been
    40        disclosed to us until two or three days before their
    41        witness on that matter came into the witness box, despite
    42        the fact, of course, that it was in the pleadings years
    43        before that we had a witness lined up to come who, in the
    44        event, did not need to be called because of that
    45        documentation, we felt.
    46
    47        So we do not need to give any more examples, but we can
    48        just say it is clear that it is inaccurate to say that
    49        McDonald's have given full discovery, and that it is clear
    50        that we believed, rightly, that McDonald's were withholding
    51        documentation that was relevant to the issues in the case,
    52        including the pleadings issues.
    53
    54   MS. STEEL:   Before I go on to the final point about damages,
    55        there were actually a few little points that I wanted to
    56        raise from what, I think, you asked Mr. Rampton in court
    57        the other day about the counterclaim matters.  There was
    58        the leaflet at pink 1A, tab 27.  Mr. Rampton said that this
    59        was a foundation for a basis of belief that
    60        London Greenpeace had been written to and therefore the

Prev Next Index