Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 48
1 sorts of answers that your Lordship felt uncomfortable with
2 my original decision not to cross-examine him any further.
3
4 My Lord, that takes us to 5th October. The Defendants by
5 those answers, and I dare say other ones in Professor
6 Crawford's evidence, with some help from your Lordship have
7 arrived at a position, whether by good luck, accident or
8 design, that they have raised a case in relation to diet
9 and cancer -- not McDonald's food and cancer but diet and
10 cancer -- which needs to be met by the Plaintiffs and goes
11 some little way to meeting the Plaintiffs' complaint about
12 the leaflet.
13
14 That said, and I make no comment about the weight of the
15 evidence or how the issues should be resolved at this stage
16 of course, but that said it is simply not open to the
17 Defendants to suggest that by stating the case in the way
18 which we now seek to do, or I should say restating the case
19 in the way which we now seek to do in the Statement of
20 Claim, the Defendants have suffered any kind of injustice
21 or prejudice. I am perfectly open, as I have said before,
22 to any reasonable suggestion that Professor Crawford should
23 come back and give new evidence (though I do not believe
24 that he needs to) or that Dr. Arnott should come back and
25 given new evidence, though there again if one reads the
26 whole of his cross examination it is perfectly apparent
27 that it relates entirely to this question of causation.
28 But there is plenty of time.
29
30 The Defendants do not face any kind of difficulty in, as it
31 were, recasting the questions which they have originally
32 asked. It is annoying for all of us, I have no doubt, but
33 there is no injustice to them. It has not cost them
34 anything. There is no great throw-away of money. That is
35 all on the basis that they have not all along been
36 perfectly well aware of what the issue actually is.
37
38 I have no authority of this, but I do not myself believe it
39 to be the law on the authorities that I have read this
40 morning, that a defendant or a party who resolutely refuses
41 to listen or to read what is said in court and clutches to
42 himself a concept of the issues in the case which is
43 divorced from objective reality, has any right to say to
44 the court When eventually the scales are torn from his
45 eyes: "Oh, I am prejudiced by this. I never realised what
46 the case was actually about."
47
48 Certain it is, in my submission, that a court entertaining
49 an application of this kind which in justice, other things
50 being equal, ought to be allowed so that the true issue can
51 be decided by the court, in such a case the court ought not
52 to deny the plaintiff justice, the applicant justice,
53 simply because, if it be the case, the other party (in this
54 case the Defendants) have kept their heads buried in the
55 sand, not likely to take on board what was the issue which
56 they had to meet, if they were to have any hope of
57 succeeding in the case.
58
59 That said, I know that your Lordship, and I would
60 respectfully endorse your Lordship's position in this
