Day 186 - 10 Nov 95 - Page 52


     
     1        than that".  I have dealt with that submission just now in
     2        relation to this particular passage, but, my Lord, at the
     3        risk of repeating what I said when I opened this argument,
     4        one only has to look at the very front page of this leaflet
     5        and -----
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I have that point of yours, Mr. Rampton.
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  Then I will not, therefore, repeat it.  What I
    10        will say is this, that when it comes to -----
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is "Everything they don't want you to
    13        know".
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:  And it is the mask.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I appreciate that.
    18
    19   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  What is the point of the mask unless someone
    20        is hiding behind it?  My Lord, when one comes to your
    21        Lordship's -- maybe I am pushing at an open door and, if
    22        so, I would be obliged if your Lordship would tell me
    23        because I do not want to waste time -- I have certainly
    24        taken the last part of your Lordship's meaning "and they
    25        falsely claim" to mean that they know, or jolly well ought
    26        to know, what the true position is and, in that knowledge
    27        or obligation of knowledge, have made what they know or
    28        ought to know are false claims.  In other words, a clear
    29        allegation of deceptive concealment; if you like, in the
    30        broad sense, fraud.
    31
    32        Then perhaps, more importantly, in the sense that there is
    33        arguably something more of a contest in this area of the
    34        argument, the question:  What degree of risk or hazard the
    35        reader will think that this leaflet is telling him
    36        McDonald's food carries with it and is being concealed by
    37        McDonald's as those two things go together?  I do not say
    38        (and never have said) that the headlines can be divorced
    39        from the text or the cartoon for that matter, or the
    40        introduction or any other part of the leaflet.  I have
    41        always said that they all have to be read together and that
    42        if one reads them together they are productive of a single
    43        meaning or impression.
    44
    45        Put it in this way, if I may:  The headings starting, and I
    46        will read them all, "McCancer", "McDisease" and "McDeadly",
    47        on which I have not really focused -- perhaps I ought to
    48        have done so -- "McDeadly" which has no other reference
    49        point in the whole of the leaflet can only, as it were, be
    50        indicative of the degree of risk which is flagged up by the 
    51        text. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I thought "McDeadly" could refer to both
    54        nutrition and to the animals.
    55
    56   MR. RAMPTON:  It might do, but then when one looks at the
    57        headings "McTorture" and "McMurder", and one sees in the
    58        animal section:  "In what way are McDonald's responsible
    59        for torture and murder", one is, I would respectfully
    60        submit, inclined to think, as a reasonable reader, that

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