Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 08
1 because of its nutritional content.
2
3 The further extension of the Plaintiffs' case that we
4 should have to prove -- I mean, McDonald's also promote
5 that kind of diet and, therefore, they share responsibility
6 because of the one billion dollars or more they spend
7 promoting that kind of diet through the promotion of that
8 kind of food as desirable.
9
10 So, the fact that it is not possible to say that if someone
11 eats a McDonald's meal they could get cancer from eating at
12 McDonald's or heart disease, we do not think it is possible
13 to read that into that. If it is possible to read that
14 into that, which we do not agree, it is definitely not the
15 meaning that is the natural and ordinary meaning of that
16 text.
17
18 In fact, it is a completely ludicrous meaning and that is
19 why, of course, it has been raised by the Plaintiffs,
20 because they are not putting up a clarification of their
21 original alleged defamatory meaning. They are, in fact,
22 trying to make the case difficult, if not impossible, for
23 the Defendants precisely because of the weakness of their
24 own case on this subject.
25
26 MS. STEEL: I think in your judgment that you had made it clear
27 that you thought, I think at a previous hearing, that it
28 was "cause". I referred you to -----
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, I do not think I said "I made it clear".
31 I said that it probably appears from the words I used that
32 that was how I was interpreting "link". They are not the
33 same thing.
34
35 MS. STEEL: There are two things out of that. I have said just
36 now that whether or not you assumed it was causal does not
37 mean that we do. The other point was the one that I made
38 last week, about things that Mr. Rampton says getting into
39 judgments, and that we cannot necessarily follow everything
40 that is said by Mr. Rampton and in judgments and treat that
41 as exactly what we are having to prove.
42
43 The way the Plaintiffs have brought this case at previous
44 hearings and continuously into the trial has been extremely
45 confusing and they have not at all been clear. When we
46 were talking about unsaturated fat the other day, there is
47 also the fact that at that hearing Mr. Rampton denied that
48 there was any respectable body that thought that there was
49 a relationship between total fat and heart disease. Now
50 they have conceded that in the letter. When they wrote to
51 us saying that they did not think we should call Professor
52 Crawford and Richard Brown, they referred to just "fat"
53 there, they did not refer to "saturated fat". The total
54 fat issue was the reason that we were still intending to
55 call Mr. Brown and Mr. Crawford, and also because there was
56 cancer anyway with Mr. Crawford, but the total fat was the
57 reason that we were still intending to call them in
58 relation to heart disease. We would have argued that had
59 it come to the argument but, as you know, it did not come
60 to argument. But, it is in their letter and the way they
