Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 37


     
     1        Plaintiffs to narrow down their investigation.
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But have you made any attempt to get this
     4        document?
     5
     6   MR. MORRIS:  Not so far.  But if the Plaintiffs have it in their
     7        possession, as it is a matter in issue, then it should be
     8        disclosed.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Is there anything you want to say at that
    11        about that?
    12
    13   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  There is, in my respectful submission, a
    14        limit to the extent to which the Defendants think by
    15        producing a press cutting or, I do not know, maybe a
    16        passage from a booklet from 40 years ago or something, that
    17        they are entitled to trawl through categories of documents
    18        which have no real bearing on the case.  I say those words
    19        slowly and carefully.  I ask this question:  How would it
    20        help your Lordship to decide the issues in this case to
    21        know whether or not it be the fact that a Consumer
    22        Protection Association in Germany had uttered certain
    23        opinions about the use of ronald mcdonald in
    24        kindergartens.  It is quite a different matter, your
    25        Lordship may think, whether your Lordship thinks it
    26        important or not, the question whether or not the use of
    27        ronald mcdonald in kindergartens is a good idea or not,
    28        whether it matters.  That is a matter upon which your
    29        Lordship can make up your own mind.
    30
    31        You are not, in our respectful submission, going to be
    32        helped in the very slightest by what the German Consumer
    33        Children's Protection Association thought about it one way
    34        or the other, assuming that they did.  A complaint or
    35        allegation repeated through the mouth of a piece of paper
    36        in this court really takes the matter nowhere at all.
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Where did it come from?
    39
    40   MR. RAMPTON:  I have no idea.
    41
    42   MR. MORRIS:  I think it was an extract from a book by our
    43        witness Siegfried Pater.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  How does help me reach any conclusion in this
    46        case?
    47
    48   MR. MORRIS:  For a start, it is on 21st March 1989, not 40 years
    49        ago.
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, but why should I pay in any way to what 
    52        that association thinks?  I might agree with them; I might 
    53        feel more strongly than they do; I might think it does not
    54        matter.  How does what the association thinks help?
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:  I think it would have the same status as if the
    57        Advertising Standards Authority rules that a McDonald's
    58        advert is misleading or deceptive, then it may not be
    59        conclusive in allegations of deceptiveness against the
    60        Plaintiff, but it would certainly help you to form an

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