Day 310 - 04 Dec 96 - Page 10


     
     1
     2   MR. RAMPTON:   Of course they could.  It is in the leaflet and
     3        it goes to the sting.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   It is an illustration of what I was saying
     6        yesterday.
     7
     8   MR. RAMPTON:   Exactly; it goes to the sting of the libel.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If bringing in young people into the meaning
    11        makes the meaning more severe than the one you have
    12        pleaded, that means you cannot rely on it, but it does not
    13        mean that the Defendants cannot rely on it.
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:   Yes.  I would not accept that it did make it more
    16        serious.  It is just another aspect of the same kind of
    17        misconduct.
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, I can see that there is that argument.
    20        I think this is obvious, but I will put it anyway.  Since
    21        the general overall sting of paying bad wages for bad
    22        working conditions, or paying bad wages and providing bad
    23        working conditions, is there any difference?
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:   There is a difference between wages and
    26        conditions, but -----
    27
    28   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  No, but it seems to me it may have some
    29        significance because to say they pay low wages I can see
    30        might not necessarily be defamatory, but I have tried to
    31        give the example of the charity organisation.  To say that
    32        an employer's working conditions are bad, again, may not
    33        necessarily be defamatory, because there are some areas of
    34        work where the work clearly has to be done for the public
    35        well-being, for the public good, but the working conditions
    36        will be described as "bad" because you cannot avoid the
    37        noise or you cannot avoid the dirt and the dust or you
    38        cannot avoid, however hard you try, temperatures which are
    39        high or temperatures which are low.
    40
    41        What may be defamatory is saying that you pay bad pay for
    42        working in bad conditions, because if the bad conditions
    43        are unavoidable one might say, "The least you can do is pay
    44        handsomely for people to do it, and if you cannot pay very
    45        much and your workforce willingly accepts that", visualise
    46        the charity organisation, "then the least you can do is
    47        make their working conditions as pleasant as possible".
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:   As you can afford, yes.
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   So, if the defamatory sting is the 
    52        combination of the two ----- 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:   My Lord, it plainly is when one looks at the
    55        words -----
    56
    57   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   The first line of N.
    58
    59   MR. RAMPTON:   Yes.  There are two reasons why that is so.  The
    60        first is that they are, in combination, given as the

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