Day 070 - 20 Dec 94 - Page 14
1 relation to beef exported from Brazil, if there is any
2 beyond the Vesty meat, which does not and never has come
3 from rainforest land.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But why have any discovery about the
6 80 tonnes then -- even that?
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: I was not going to offer discovery about the
9 80 tonnes unless ordered to do it.
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That just came in because of these documents
12 which the Defendants obtained?
13
14 MR. RAMPTON: Your Lordship may remember that His Royal Highness
15 the Duke of Edinburgh caused a rumpus in late 1982 or early
16 1983 on the footing that some person (who later retracted)
17 called Dr. Myers had said that McDonald's were helping to
18 destroy the rainforests.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: There has been no evidence that Dr. Myers
21 retracted.
22
23 MR. RAMPTON: There is plenty of evidence in the sense
24 Mr. Morris understands "evidence". There is a letter of
25 retraction or a statement about retraction in the disclosed
26 documents.
27
28 It so happened that Barlow Lyde & Gilbert had a file in the
29 office containing those drafts by their partner (that your
30 Lordship now has) attached to which was the Vesty letter.
31 By an error -- which can happen in a busy form of
32 solicitors -- the whole file was disclosed to the
33 Defendants. It is only by that route that the Defendants
34 got to know what is, in fact, quite irrelevant to the
35 issues of this case, that meat had been exported from
36 Brazil to this country through the Vesty company.
37
38 The Vesty letter speaks for itself. It says: "This is not
39 and never was rainforest beef. The land from which it
40 comes was deforested in the 1880s, the last forest in the
41 1880s."
42
43 Because the Defendants had the letter, we thought it right
44 to ask Mr. David Walker if he knew anything about it.
45 Result of that was that he was able to verify what
46 Lord Vesty says in his letter, because he had been there
47 and he knows that the beef does not come from rainforest
48 land.
49
50 I do not propose, unless your Lordship orders me to do so,
51 for example, to disclose shipment documents or contracts in
52 relation to those 80 tonnes. They have absolutely no
53 relevance to this case whatsoever.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. What is relevant in relation to the
56 80 tonnes is, since there seems to be no real issue about
57 the period of time when it took place, it seems to me there
58 is absolutely no point in having shipment documents unless
59 and to the extent that they show where the beef actually
60 came from.
