Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 18
1 MR. RAMPTON: There is no dispute.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is just the other way round it cannot
4 work. I cannot find a more serious meaning than the one
5 Mr. Rampton has pleaded, find in his favour on that basis
6 and then award his client damages for a more serious
7 meaning than the one they have alleged. But it does not
8 stop you saying 'It means more, more than that, and we have
9 justified it'.
10
11 MR. RAMPTON: Well, they are not allowed to say it means more;
12 they are allowed to say, 'If it means more it was true
13 anyhow'.
14
15 MS. STEEL: It was my understanding that we were entitled to
16 justify up to... No, that you could find a meaning up to
17 their meaning but not higher than it, and that we are
18 entitled to justify their meaning even if we do not agree
19 with it.
20
21 MR JUSTICE BELL: Absolutely, yes.
22
23 MS. STEEL: Right. This has come up before, but since the
24 Plaintiffs' defamatory meaning is an inferential meaning
25 that means that we are entitled to try to justify it by
26 reference to all the other matters which were not
27 specifically referred to in the fact sheet but on which
28 evidence has been heard in court. For example, all the
29 detailed information about conditions for the broiler
30 chickens - leg problems, the lighting and heating, and so
31 on. Well, actually, yes, those conditions are in fact
32 referred to, or by inference, in the fact sheet anyway --
33 sorry -- where it mentions that some of them, especially
34 chickens and pigs, spend their lives in the entirely
35 artificial conditions of huge factory farms. So there is
36 an inference there about the conditions under which they
37 are reared. I think on day 205 there was discussion about
38 inferential meaning.
39
40 MR JUSTICE BELL: I may be wrong but what it seems to me is that
41 it is more a question of whether there is a general charge
42 which you can then support with specific facts other than
43 specific facts which are there. It may well be that a lot
44 of general charges are inferential ones. In other words,
45 you infer the general charge from a number of specific
46 matters there. I will hear Mr. Rampton in due course but
47 it seems to me there is a general charge, it is a question
48 of what it is. You have used your words to say that one is
49 utterly indifferent seems to me to be a general charge.
50 Mr. Rampton may argue, no, it is utterly indifferent in
51 specific ways. I do not know. But if there is a general
52 charge then, subject to argument I hear, you are entitled
53 to justify it by matters which are outside the leaflet as
54 well as those which are referred to in it.
55
56 MS. STEEL: Yes.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If I find the general meaning.
59
60 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I think that is right, if I may say so.
