Day 143 - 27 Jun 95 - Page 36


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  2 o'clock.
     3
     4                        (Luncheon Adjournment)
     5
     6   MR. MORRIS:  Just thinking about the discussion that was had --
     7        it is a legal matter -- about the letter from the trade
     8        union official.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    11
    12   MR. MORRIS:  The National Officer.  McDonald's have tried to
    13        justify the action by saying that we are motivated by
    14        malice, and in the counterclaim their defence is that we
    15        should be aware of the rightness of their position, or that
    16        the leaflet is all lies because of the evidence that has
    17        been available or the documents that have been available in
    18        the case.  It, surely, is relevant to our state of mind, at
    19        least, that documents that we have disclosed, or documents
    20        from the other side, contain things which back up our --
    21        whether they are admissible as evidence ------
    22
    23   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You may have a point to that effect if and
    24        when you give evidence yourself.  Putting malice on one
    25        side for a moment, if you argue (as I anticipate you will)
    26        saying that a leaflet which you are alleged to have
    27        published, or participated in publishing, if saying that
    28        such a leaflet is lies carries with it the imputation that
    29        you as a publisher of it, if such you be, have lied, and if
    30        you go on to say that you can only lie if you say something
    31        which is untrue knowing that it is untrue, so that it is
    32        relevant to look at your state of information and what you
    33        actually believed at the time, then I can see an argument
    34        (which I will not rule on at the moment in case there is
    35        some dispute about it) that in relation to this or that you
    36        will say:  "Well, our state of information was this and,
    37        whether we were right or wrong to do so, we believed what
    38        we read".
    39
    40        But that is not the situation we are dealing with now.  The
    41        fact that a document may be material in some context which
    42        has not yet been created does not, in my view, mean that
    43        you can use it for another purpose where it is
    44        inadmissible.
    45
    46        At the moment, I am not minded to agree with your
    47        contention that, for instance, a union is the best
    48        institution to decide whether someone else or some other
    49        company is anti-union, whatever the rights of wrongs of
    50        that.  I have to decide whether McDonald's is anti-union as 
    51        one of a large number of issues in this case and, if so, as 
    52        Mr. Rampton putting it in opening, whether that makes one 
    53        jot of difference.
    54
    55        So, my ruling at the moment is that it is not permissible
    56        to put the contents of this letter to Mr. Stein, although
    57        you can perfectly well put the kind of question which
    58        I put.  But it is not legitimate, in my view, to put to
    59        Mr. Stein what -- in this case there is no harm in
    60        mentioning the union -- the Transport and General Workers

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