Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 47
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Your real point is that there might be
3 something there which, although is something completely
4 different perhaps, you could show to be wrong or that it
5 did not happen so it goes to credibility?
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7 MS. STEEL: There is that point. There is also the point about
8 that it does give a perspective on whether or not this was
9 a major campaign and whether or not we and other people
10 were involved in lots of other campaigns. I think I may
11 have said in my statement, if I did not I was quite
12 involved in a campaign against the World Bank at the time
13 and I do know that that was discussed at meetings from time
14 to time. For example, things like that may indicate what
15 kind of, you know, what we were actually involved in at the
16 time.
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18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
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20 MS. STEEL: I do not have Mr. Clare's notes, so I am not sure
21 whether there are any particular examples, but the general
22 principle is the same, that even if it is not directly
23 about McDonald's, it is relevant for the purposes of
24 enabling us to advance our case or damage that of
25 McDonald's. I do not think there is anything else I want
26 to say.
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28 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, I hope that we have done what we should
29 have done. This exercise was done by me and Mr. Atkinson,
30 not by the solicitors. So if there is any error in it we
31 accept responsibility for it. We do not believe there is.
32 We have obeyed which we take to be the correct principles.
33 We have blanked out only those parts of the notes which we
34 deem to be wholly irrelevant to the issues in this action
35 to which the, notes or any part of them, might be thought
36 to relate. In a sense, of course, unless Ms. Steel can
37 satisfy your Lordship that, on the face of the blanking
38 out, we have been wrong about that, that should be the end
39 of it. But, in fairness, it is only right that I should
40 tell your Lordship I believe how we went about it.
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42 We conceived that the relevant issues as they arise in the
43 pleadings were publication, malice, the claim for the
44 injunction and the Defence to Counterclaim.
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46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: By the "counterclaim" you mean anything which
47 might indicate whether the Defendants believed or did not
48 believe ----
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50 MR. RAMPTON: Partly that, my Lord, and partly also the
51 promulgation of further material of a similar kind, since
52 the leaflets complained of in the counterclaim are not
53 published until 1994, to which those leaflets might be said
54 to be a defence. So that everything emanating from this
55 group concerning McDonald's with the participation, direct
56 or indirect, would be relevant.
57
58 Taking that those issues as our starting point, it seemed
59 to us that as an adjunct of those issues what mattered was
60 in these notes the Defendants' involvement in the
