Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 37
1 McDonald's-----
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But there is no reference to it in relation
4 to advertising?
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: There does not have to be, because that is the
7 inevitable effect of the advertising. You get the children
8 into the restaurants and their health is going to be
9 destroyed as a result of that. It does not-----
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So, the seduction is seduction to eat the
12 food which might give you cancer as well?
13
14 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, of course. According to this, the food has
15 all the properties which are attributed to it by the
16 leaflet. The least serious of which, or the most
17 unremarkable, is that it is described as junk food,
18 whatever that may mean, or mediocre.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So, the meaning I suggested should read at the
21 end, you would say, seducing them into eating poor and
22 possibly poisonous food which might lead to them having
23 heart disease or cancer.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: In due course, yes, I think that is inevitable.
26 But for my purposes it may not matter terribly much because
27 your Lordship has already found that the meaning is that
28 the food is very unhealthy, et cetera, and that McDonald's
29 know it, and so it is an inescapable function of their
30 advertising that they are getting children to eat food
31 which is very unhealthy and which they know perfectly well
32 is very unhealthy. That is really one of the problems with
33 statements of claim in libel, they do impose a certain
34 artificiality by the meanings they plead since, in the way
35 of lawyers, they tend to split things up. In effect, one
36 hardly needs a pleaded meaning for this leaflet anyway, if
37 one just reads it as a whole most of its messages are
38 almost literal in their defamatory message.
39
40 There is no question if I were a parent and I read this
41 leaflet, and if I believed it, one of the things I would be
42 saying is, no way am I taking my children anywhere near
43 that place, not for any length of time anyway.
44
45 I just noticed, just as an afterthought.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It would have been very easy to spell it out
48 by saying it is at best mediocre, or is unhealthy and
49 mediocre, or just say is unhealthy.
50
51 MR. RAMPTON: Unhealthy or very unhealthy, and may give them
52 food poisoning.
53
54 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But it does not actually say that?
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: No, it does not have to because you only get to
57 the children bit after you have read the unhealthy food bit
58 anyway.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I understand your argument.
