Day 177 - 26 Oct 95 - Page 58


     
     1        at least to reflect probability rather than possibility.
     2        In fact, we would say (as I have already said repeatedly),
     3        the flavour of the leaflet is one of certainty.
     4
     5        The reason that I am troubled about the passage in your
     6        Lordship's proposal which introduces diet as a root to
     7        illness, which it does, is that it attempts a
     8        reconciliation, or perhaps I had better say resolution of
     9        the conflation or confusion, the known sequitur, about food
    10        and diet which is to be found in the leaflet itself.
    11
    12        Unless the reader is to be thought of as somebody having an
    13        out of the ordinary knowledge of nutrition, that resolution
    14        or reconciliation would not be attempted by the reader.  He
    15        is met with a passage in a leaflet, a polemic leaflet,
    16        which tells him that the food is dangerous.  Unless he sits
    17        down and puzzles it out and asks his doctor, he is not
    18        going to see that there is any break in the chain between
    19        consumption of hamburgers and the onset of the disease.
    20
    21        So, my Lord, we would respectfully suggest that if this
    22        meaning is preferred to the meaning we have pleaded, and I
    23        am not suggesting that we accept it should be, the right
    24        thing to do would be to cross out the words after "it" and
    25        beginning with the "may", down to the words "minerals with
    26        the" in the third line, so as to lose the whole of the
    27        second and third lines, and to insert the words before
    28         "very real risk carries the", so that it read:
    29         "McDonald's food is unhealthy because eating it carries
    30        the very real risk that you will suffer cancer of the
    31        breast or bowel or heart disease as a result, and that
    32        although McDonald's know or ought to know this they do not"
    33        and so on and so forth.  That, we feel, would faithfully
    34        reflect the message which the ordinary person, with an
    35        ordinary knowledge of the world and without specialised
    36        information about the relationship between food and diet,
    37        would derive from this leaflet in its proper context.
    38
    39        I hope I can say those things without treading on your
    40        Lordship's toes.
    41
    42   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Certainly not, because the whole point of
    43        mentioning it -- admittedly I may have been speaking more
    44        directly to Ms. Steel and Mr. Morris -- was to give
    45        everyone an ample opportunity to knock it down.
    46
    47   MR. RAMPTON:  I am afraid I think it ought to be -- I feel that
    48        it ought to be knocked down at any rate as far as that.
    49        Can I, in aid of that then, finally -- and I have finished
    50        now -- hand up and to the Defendants those two different 
    51        edited versions - one what I call the full edited version. 
    52        Your Lordship will see that I have also crossed out the 
    53        words "or ought to know".  I do not mind if your Lordship
    54        ignores that because I do not think it is a big point at
    55        all.  (Handed).  Behind that with a "2" in the right-hand
    56        corner is what I would call the unedited bit, which leaves
    57        in the reference to diet which I would, myself -- we,
    58        ourselves, would much rather see it removed---
    59
    60   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.

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