Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 34
1 MR. RAMPTON: There it is.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: When we came to the fact that the evidence
4 was unchallenged, then -- I take your point.
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: It is not only that; I did not call any evidence;
7 and I believe that Professor Wheelock said it, himself, in
8 his evidence-in-chief, but I will have to check that.
9
10 MS. STEEL: As we understood, the reason why they did not need
11 to call any evidence was because they had admitted an
12 association and, therefore, that was the end of the issue
13 as pleaded.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You can check, but I think Mr. Rampton is
16 right, that Professor Wheelock did say he accepted the
17 causal relationship.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: Yes. But the point is, they would not need to
20 bring any evidence on heart disease if their admission on
21 association was covering (as we say it did) the link,
22 because there was no need to prove causal association. The
23 only time it has been needed to prove causality has been in
24 the light of this new amendment that Mr. Rampton is trying
25 to make now.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand the arguments on both sides.
28
29 MS. STEEL: As I was saying, this argument was prepared for the
30 specific admission on a causal relationship between diet
31 and heart disease. In the light of that admission, I do
32 not know that we really need to go into number 10.
33
34 Going on to number 11 -- and this is referring to the fact
35 that we were advised by you to ask Dr. Barnard, at least,
36 questions about the existence of a causal link between diet
37 and cancer in case the Plaintiffs won this application --
38 we submit that this is not a satisfactory solution, for a
39 number of reasons: that we may well have engaged different
40 experts if the pleadings had alleged that the passage in
41 the leaflet meant there was a causal link between
42 McDonald's meals and cancer; that we prepared our case and
43 questioning, cross-examination, et cetera, on the basis of
44 the Plaintiffs' pleaded case, reinforced by the admission
45 that they had made a non-admission of any link between diet
46 and cancer; and that we did not specifically concentrate
47 ourselves on "cause". Obviously "cause" cropped up, but
48 that was not something we concentrated on.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have to say that I have done quite a bit of
51 re-reading, and I do have difficulty with that. Maybe it
52 was not exclusively what you dealt with -- I accept that --
53 you dealt with other factors, as well, but there was a very
54 considerable amount of cross-examination of the relevant
55 witnesses about "cause".
56
57 MS. STEEL: In terms of Mr. Wheelock, I think that at the
58 most -- I am not sure -- we only asked him about "cause"
59 maybe 20 times, or that "cause" was only mentioned during
60 cross-examination 20 times at most; whereas words like
