Day 139 - 21 Jun 95 - Page 55


     
     1        your cross-examination about matters in Puerto Rico to the
     2        union dispute there which took place in the 70s.
     3
     4        The only reason any reference to earlier years came in in
     5        Mr. Stein's evidence is the perfectly understandable one
     6        that a few sentences have run into it, so that we did not
     7        suddenly move from one part of the world to the union
     8        dispute in the other, but you must restrict your
     9        questioning on Puerto Rico to the union dispute.  If
    10        someone could give me the references in your Further and
    11        Better Particulars?
    12
    13   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes, my Lord.  It is two paragraphs, 43 and 107.
    14        Either that is reference to a wholly different dispute
    15        about which Mr. Stein knows nothing in the mid 1960s, or
    16        else it is a misprint from mid 1970s.
    17
    18   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  As I understand it, the nub of this
    19        allegation is in item 107, the second two sentences, this
    20        is your case:  "After negotiated improvements in conditions
    21        all the franchises were sold to a new franchiser" --
    22        franchisee, I think it should be -- "who was hostile to the
    23        union.  A nine month strike then followed.  McDonald's then
    24        closed all the stores and pulled out of the island."  The
    25        way I had interpreted that was that McDonald's hostility
    26        was such that when the union called a strike McDonald's
    27        reaction was to shut up shop.
    28
    29        If that is your case, then I understand the relevance to a
    30        possible justification of what appears in the leaflet.  So
    31        that is what you ought to be cross-examining about and
    32        putting to Mr. Stein that that, in a sentence, is the nub
    33        of your allegation.
    34
    35   MR. MORRIS:  As pleaded, the real reason that the franchise was
    36        sold by Mr. Gibson, as pleaded in the pleading, was because
    37        of his agreement that he had entered into with, you have
    38        called it the Gastronomical Workers' Union in your
    39        statement.
    40        A.  I do not understand what you just said.
    41
    42   Q.   You have said that Mr. Gibson entered into a collective
    43        bargaining agreement with the Gastronomical Workers' Union,
    44        and then you have said, "His operational standards were
    45        very poor and this resulted in McDonald's terminating his
    46        franchise for Puerto Rico".  You stick by what you have
    47        said, do you?
    48        A.  I stick by what I said in the statement that Mr. Gibson
    49        ----
    50 
    51   Q.   I put it to you that Mr. Gibson's operational 
    52        standards ---- 
    53        A.  Let us get some timing.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just pause, because I think Mr. Morris is
    56        actually now going to put what his real case is in relation
    57        to this.  Start again.
    58
    59   MR. MORRIS:  I put it to you that Mr. Gibson, who was one of the
    60        founders of McDonald's East Coast empire, and we can back

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