Day 083 - 06 Feb 95 - Page 45
1 relates to your pleaded case in relation to that which has
2 not been given and should, you raise it now.
3
4 MR. MORRIS: The Costa Rica is, obviously, the documents that
5 Dr. Gomez Gonzales had seen which was variously described,
6 well, originally described as about 20 documents. It may
7 have gone down over the period of his questioning dating
8 back to the early 1980s in regard to the exports issue from
9 Costa Rica, and also to the source of supplies within Costa
10 Rica. He certainly referred to correspondence. I cannot
11 remember -----
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you have the reference for it?
14
15 MR. MORRIS: The only reference I have got is it was 16th
16 December I think.
17
18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Day 68 then.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: It was page 27 line 48, but I cannot remember -----
21
22 MR. RAMPTON: It may be that I can cut this short.
23
24 MS. STEEL: I think that is in fact in the transcript reference
25 for the screen as opposed to the printed copy.
26
27 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, it may be I can cut this short. One of
28 the reasons why Mr. Hill has not been in court all that
29 much recently is that, amongst other places, he has been to
30 Costa Rica. He went there with Mr. David Widenfelt on
31 behalf of the American Plaintiff. They searched the
32 documents of the McDonald's people in Costa Rica. They
33 found one document which might (and I say might) be
34 relevant, and that is to say a specification from 1992
35 guaranteeing that the beef did not come from any
36 rainforest. It is a side version, I think, of the
37 corporate policy on rainforest with which we are all
38 familiar, but since it dates from 1992 it may not have much
39 value. There was nothing else which bore upon the source
40 of the beef used for McDonald's in Costa Rica at any time
41 and certainly not for any of the years pleaded in the
42 Defence.
43
44 Coope Montecillos, which is no longer a supplier of
45 McDonald's in Costa Rica, were not willing to provide
46 assistance or facilities for inspection of their records.
47 Whether after he has finished his evidence, or perhaps
48 during his evidence, Dr. Gomez Gonzalez is able to offer
49 any further help I cannot possibly tell. I will tell your
50 Lordship this, because Mrs. Brinley-Codd said that I should
51 and I agree with her. She and I spoke to his head of
52 department, that is Dr. Gomez Gonzalez's head of
53 department, to explain that he must not speak to anybody
54 within the corporation or outside it about his evidence.
55 What we did do was to highlight all the relevant parts of
56 his transcript where a question had arisen as to documents
57 and send them to his head of department for further
58 research. Unfortunately, what happened, and this may
59 lighten a grey afternoon, was that UPS who sent the parcel
60 addressing it to the right person, but put on it "Diamond
