Day 245 - 07 May 96 - Page 58


     
     1   MS. STEEL:   The first page just asks about to retract the
     2        following allegations concerning rainforest and torture and
     3        murder of animals and then this is what is to be printed:
     4
     5        "Our response to this demand is as follows:
     6
     7        1. We are now willing to apologise for having repeated
     8        claims for which we have been unable to trace specific
     9        evidence concerning the connection with McDonald's and the
    10        raising of beef on former rainforests;
    11
    12        2.  We are willing to concede that by common usage the
    13        words 'murder and 'torture" are not yet widely used in
    14        connection with the killing of animals (although by our
    15        standard this is indeed the case) and we regret any
    16        embarrassment suffered by McDonald's Hamburgers Limited due
    17        to this statement.
    18
    19        Veggies Limited dated" and obviously they had to put the
    20        date of when they printed it.
    21
    22        So your solicitors on your behalf were telling Veggies that
    23        they were happy for that correction to go out to rectify
    24        what they considered as the wrong information in the
    25        leaflet that Veggies had produced.
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I can see what is in the letter.  What
    28        concerns me at the moment is where we are going because,
    29        for better or worse, McDonald's have now alleged that a
    30        number of other things are defamatory and untrue and, at
    31        the end of the day, I am going to decide whether that is
    32        right or not.  So, I am not going to be affected by what a
    33        solicitor wrote in 1987 or 1988.  I will have 100 times
    34        more evidence available to me than the solicitor ever had
    35        then.
    36
    37   MS. STEEL:  The solicitors ----
    38
    39   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But if there is some additional point then
    40        make it clear by putting it to the witness.
    41
    42   MS. STEEL:   The solicitors were writing on your behalf, were
    43        they not?
    44        A.  Yes.
    45
    46   Q.   And earlier you said that you felt all these issues were
    47        equally serious, you particularly did not like the
    48        headlines, the arches across the top, and yet you have not
    49        taken any action whatsoever to try and correct what you
    50        conceived to be seriously inaccurate allegations in an 
    51        identical leaflet.  Why is that? 
    52        A.  I think that was the hot issue at the time, 
    53        rainforests, packaging, environment.  That is the one that
    54        we chose to deal with.  I do not remember eight, nine years
    55        ago the discussions involving the actual wording but
    56        I think it is probably consistent with our attitude towards
    57        these issues just as it has been in this case.  If someone
    58        gets it wrong, they say they got it wrong.  We withdrew the
    59        writs and would have done so here too.
    60

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