Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 26
1 "... justice cannot always be measured in terms of money
2 and in my view a judge is entitled to weigh in the balance
3 the strain the litigation imposes on litigants,
4 particularly if they are personal litigants, rather than
5 business corporations."
6
7 Obviously, that applies very much to us. We do find this
8 litigation a big strain. It does basically mean that we
9 virtually do not have any lives outside this case. We do
10 not have time to do all the things that we want to do; in
11 fact, we do not have time to do hardly any of the things we
12 want to do.
13
14 "The anxieties occasioned by facing new issues, the raising
15 of false hopes....."
16
17 On the subject of raising false hopes, when we got the
18 Plaintiffs' witnesses to agree to the fact that it was
19 generally accepted that there was a link between diet and
20 disease, our hopes were raised and we did feel that we had
21 won that point. To now change the case, so that we have to
22 build the case all over again, does have an effect on us.
23
24 "The anxieties occasioned by facing new issues, the raising
25 of false hopes, and the legitimate expectation that the
26 trial will determine the issues one way or the other.
27 Furthermore, to allow an amendment before a trial begins is
28 quite different from allowing it at the end of the trial to
29 give an apparently unsuccessful defendant an opportunity to
30 renew the fight on an entirely different defence."
31
32 And, we would submit, to give an apparently unsuccessful
33 Plaintiff an opportunity to renew the fight on an entirely
34 pleaded meaning and Statement of Claim.
35
36 Whilst we are looking at that paragraph, yesterday,
37 Mr. Rampton said that you could ignore the question of the
38 cost, because there had been no cost to us and would be no
39 costs to us in allowing the amendments. I wanted to say
40 that I actually found that an extremely offensive remark.
41
42 Firstly, there has been a cost to us in financial terms in
43 preparing the case, doing research, photocopying,
44 contacting witnesses, paying their fares to get to court,
45 making all the arrangements to get them to court.
46
47 Perhaps in the terms of the sort of money that McDonald's
48 has to throw around, the amount we have spent is peanuts,
49 but, in terms of what our income is, the cost has been very
50 substantial indeed.
51
52 As a proportion of each parties' respective income, I think
53 I could very safely say that we have spent far, far more on
54 our case than the Plaintiffs have done on theirs.
55
56 Furthermore, our funds are limited. The more we spend on
57 the nutrition issue, the less we have to spend on the other
58 issues, which may cause difficulties with paying for the
59 fares of other witnesses to get to court and other work
60 that has to be to be done for the purposes of this case.
