Day 278 - 11 Jul 96 - Page 39
1 doing that. I have seen this in various places, and it is
2 like, just because we cannot get, we cannot get a witness
3 from over in Brazil to come over and say that, it does not
4 mean that is it not true. It is, like I said before.
5
6 Q. But you have been in contact with the man who wrote the
7 book have you not?
8 A. Yes Doug Shane, yes. I don't know whether he was
9 asked. I mean, I did not speak to him. Mr. Morris spoke
10 to him so I don't know what he was asked about. It was
11 written, obviously, 16 years -- is it 16? No, sorry, about
12 11 years previously, and I know Mr. Morris did ask him for
13 who he had spoken to and things like that, but a lot of
14 them he had lost contact with and so on.
15
16 Q. Correct me if I am wrong, I do not have any evidence that
17 McDonald's has ever owned a single cow in Brazil do I?
18 A. You don't have any evidence in this court but that does
19 not mean that it does not exist. This is what I was trying
20 to explain before about the counterclaim. The fact that,
21 say, for example, we had not had a witness about McDonald's
22 and the food poisoning outbreak in Preston and McDonald's
23 had not made the admission, the fact that we did not have a
24 witness would not mean that McDonald's were not responsible
25 for the food poisoning outbreak, it would just mean that we
26 had not been able to make contact with the necessary
27 person.
28
29 And as far as I am concerned, that is the situation
30 now, because of our lack of resources, our lack of
31 experience in how to, you know, take witness statements, it
32 has all been very haphazard and we have just phoned up
33 people and said, "Look, can you write down your
34 experiences". We have never gone to interview people, to
35 take detailed statements to find out exactly what they
36 know. We have just relied on them putting down what they
37 remember and what they think is relevant. It is something
38 that has been said in a lot of places, and I personally
39 believe it.
40
41 Q. Yes. Well, what else did you want to deal with; is there
42 anything more you wanted to say about what you were asked
43 in cross-examination about the rainforest?
44 A. I don't think there is.
45
46 Q. No.
47 A. I mean, the documents, there are lots of other
48 references to McDonald's in the rainforest bundles. I have
49 not -- I mean, I have read them all at various times, some
50 of them before the writ some of them after the writs. I
51 have not had time to go through everything to, you know, to
52 be able to point them all out. And I know I cannot blame
53 anybody else for that, but it is just a fact of having such
54 a big case as a litigant in person and, you know, having so
55 much to do and not having the time to do everything that
56 needs to be done.
57
58 Q. Yes. Well, what else do you want to tell me in the
59 equivalent of re-examination as it were?
60 A. There is a couple of things about the Mcspotlight
