Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 40


     
     1        case against these Plaintiffs in this action.
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  So, if that is right, what they can do is
     4        they can assert the 80 tonnes ---
     5
     6   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
     7
     8   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- they can argue, for whatever chance it may
     9        have of success, that 80 tonnes is enough -- whether that
    10        will succeed or not, one will have to decide -- they can
    11        argue 80 tonnes is enough for some indirect responsibility,
    12        even if it comes from scrubbed plains of Brazil which have
    13        never been rainforest or not for a million years, if that
    14        were the situation.  But what they cannot seek is discovery
    15        of any other imports or exports, call them what you will,
    16        because any allegation that there were further amounts, to
    17        use Lord Justice Neill's phrase, if I remember it
    18        correctly, is irrevocably bad, there is nothing to support
    19        it -- irretrievably bad, I think.
    20
    21   MR. RAMPTON:  That is right.  You have to have a basis,
    22        reasonable grounds, I think the Court of Appeal said, for
    23        believing that it is so.
    24
    25   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  And lack of knowledge of Dr. Gomez Gonzales
    26        and Mr. David Walker, you said, is a negative which cannot
    27        lead to a positive in any way.
    28
    29   MR. RAMPTON:  Mr. David Walker is more than lack of
    30        knowledge. He says, as far as he is concerned, that he is
    31        the sole supplier of beef in this country of beef to
    32        McDonald's (and always has been), it has never happened
    33        here.  So, so far as the Second Plaintiffs are concerned,
    34        that is the end of the matter.  The fact that Dr. Gomez
    35        Gonzales who, I think, joined McDonald's in 1991 did not
    36        know about an 80 tonne shipment to this country in
    37        1983/1984 need surprise nobody, and certainly is not a
    38        positive foundation for an allegation that it is happened
    39        more than once or, which is much more to the point, that it
    40        has happened habitually.
    41
    42        If the Defendants were in a position positively to assert
    43        by reference to credible materials -- I do not say
    44        admissible evidence -- that vast numbers of cattle were
    45        being sacrificed in Brazil to be exported to McDonald's
    46        outlets in the rest of the world, with the result that
    47        people in Brazil were prompted to make more room for cattle
    48        and by that route to impinge upon the welfare of the
    49        rainforest, well, that would be a different matter.
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But you can refine it more than that, can 
    52        you, by saying even if they are entitled to argue the 80 
    53        tonnes, they might be entitled to argue the effect of an
    54        extra 100 if there was any evidence of it, but there is
    55        absolutely no  ---
    56
    57   MR. RAMPTON:  There is no evidence.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- information, let alone evidence, to lead
    60        one to make such an allegation.

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