Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 35
1 MR. RAMPTON: It is on malice, my Lord. That is all.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Very well.
4
5 MR. RAMPTON: I have said all I have to say about publication.
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is the position on malice -- I think the
8 answer is fairly obvious, but I will ask you anyway -- if
9 the Defendants' motives are about equal measures of belief
10 in most, at least, of the allegations in the leaflet, on
11 the one hand, and a wish to smash McDonald's, on the
12 other?
13
14 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, that begs such a huge question, I am not
15 sure how to answer that. The wish to smash McDonald's has
16 to be the dominant motive. Equal measures is not a concept
17 which I have ever actually -- it could be, on the facts,
18 I suppose.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Does it really boil down to this: I have got
21 to think that any other motive is really of no real
22 significance?
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: It may be of significance because, as Lord Diplock
25 said in Horrocks v. Lowe the motives with which people act
26 are mixed, and there may well -- this is a little example
27 I gave about the man who comments on the performance of the
28 company -- one may well invite a strongly held view that
29 the managing director is incompetent, but it would be quite
30 clear from that example that one's dominant motive --
31 though one is anxious to express one honest opinion, that
32 was not the dominant motive for the publication.
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
35
36 MR. RAMPTON: There may be well be some areas of the case --
37 Ms. Steel's beliefs about animals will certainly be one of
38 them, I should have thought; and, although Mr. Morris has
39 not given evidence, your Lordship might think, having
40 observed him and the way he conducted himself in court and
41 so on, your Lordship might infer, although it is not,
42 strictly speaking, evidence in the sense that it has been
43 given from the witness box -- nevertheless, as
44 your Lordship once said in the course of this case, you
45 have eyes and ears -- that Mr. Morris was particularly
46 passionate about some areas of employment, for example.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
49
50 MR. RAMPTON: The real question to which all of this material in
51 malice leads back is, at the times of publication between
52 September 1987 and the end of 1989 in particular -- though,
53 to some extent, thereafter -- were the Defendants, if they
54 published this material or caused it to be published,
55 primarily seeking to express what they believed to be true
56 about McDonald's, or were they primarily concerned to smash
57 McDonald's because it represented that most hated class,
58 American multi-nationals ---
59
60 MS. STEEL: There is absolutely no evidence of that at all.
