Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 27


     
     1        to take the words literally and say: "Well, if you have not
     2        proved that I stole the axe on Tuesday and you can only
     3        prove that I did it on Wednesday, you fail."
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  So, if you can say, "Well, it is very nearly
     6        true and the criticism is well made", then that is enough.
     7
     8   MR. RAMPTON:  That is enough.  It is, at any rate, enough to
     9        deprive the Plaintiffs from getting much damages, if it
    10        were true.
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  No complaint is actually made in either
    13        of the meanings in the Statement of Claim of a defamatory
    14        meaning from the reference to antibiotics, growth promoting
    15        hormone drugs or pesticide residues.
    16
    17   MR. RAMPTON:  No, it is not.
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Is that because, as one might understand,
    20        McDonald's believe the allegations of the risk from food
    21        poisoning, or of food poisoning, is of more potential
    22        danger to their reputation?
    23
    24   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  I mean, I do not know the answer to that
    25        question because I was not in the case in those days, but
    26        I suspect that what has happened is that the thing which
    27        strikes at McDonald's business is the allegation that there
    28        is a serious risk of food poisoning in their restaurants.
    29        Most ordinary readers, one guesses, would say to
    30        themselves: "OK, the farmers may be using various things
    31        they did not ought to be using, but that is hardly
    32        McDonald's fault anyway."  It may not even be a defamatory
    33        allegation, so far as McDonald's are concerned, whereas the
    34        food poisoning quite plainly is.
    35
    36   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But they are valid considerations ---
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON:  In what sense, my Lord?
    39
    40   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- are they not, in considering
    41        justification?
    42
    43   MR. RAMPTON:  I am rather doubtful whether they are, because a
    44        justification has to be aimed at a defamatory meaning, and
    45        a defamatory meaning which the Plaintiff complains of, so
    46        long always as it is a distinct and severable charge.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is the point I have in mind.
    49
    50   MR. RAMPTON:  I realise that.  But it might be thought -- 
    51        I would submit that it probably should be thought -- that 
    52        an allegation that McDonald's sell meat products into which 
    53        the farmers who supply them have injected excessive
    54        quantities -- not even excessive quantities, quantities --
    55        sufficient to result in residues in the food was not really
    56        McDonald's fault at all.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Well, can I put, though, the same question to
    59        you as I did with regard to chicken?  If the Defendants
    60        proved a serious risk from antibiotics, growth promoting

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