Day 294 - 05 Nov 96 - Page 10
1 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Therefore, wherever there is a system which
4 is criticised here, save where there is something in the
5 criticism which positively points away from McDonald's,
6 maybe pet food is that, since I have got the McDonald's
7 trademark all the way across the top of the leaflet,
8 whoever made the leaflet not only bothered to put in the
9 distinctive McDonald's arches but put a little 'TM' in the
10 bottom corner. And since it says 'What's Wrong with
11 McDonald's', and, you know, I can see Ronald and the man
12 with the 'M' on his leaflet, every time you say this has
13 nothing to do with McDonald's, I have a bit of a problem.
14 There we are.
15
16 MS. STEEL: I don't think we have said it has nothing to do
17 with McDonald's. It is just that it is not specific.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You carry on anyway.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: This is an important part of the whole meaning for
22 all the issues. I think that there is -- so there is no
23 misunderstanding, what we are saying is if we say
24 capitalism is, you know, starving people to death and
25 McDonald's is part of capitalism, it does not mean to say
26 necessarily that McDonald's is starving people to death, it
27 just means that we have to show that capitalism is doing
28 that and that McDonald's is part of that system.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I know, but I am not on what you have to show
31 to justify at the moment. I am on the meaning. You have
32 said precisely what I was trying to say a few sentences
33 ago. If you say something is causing starvation and then
34 you go on to say McDonald's is part of that something, that
35 seems to me to be tantamount to saying McDonald's is
36 causing that something. It may be that they are doing it
37 in harness with a lot of other people, it may be defamatory
38 of a lot of other people apart from McDonald's, but it is
39 certainly pointing at McDonald's. When you say "but look
40 at the overall tenor and the back page", I understand that
41 point with regard to malice, but I do not understand it to
42 point away from McDonald's. (Pause)
43
44 MR. MORRIS: Yes, but the point I am making on justification is
45 that we only have to show how they are part of a system.
46
47 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, I know. I was not talking about
48 justification at all.
49
50 MR. MORRIS: We don't have to show that they are even aware of
51 what is happening.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but you must go through the exercise of
54 seeing what the meaning is, first, seeing whether it is
55 defamatory, before you ever come to justification. When I
56 ask you what the meaning is and whether it is defamatory, I
57 am not even looking to see whether it might be justified.
58
59 One of the things I said in my ruling on the meaning of the
60 nutrition part was that it was totally irrelevant to see
