Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 11


     
     1   MS. STEEL:  It is like the thing with smoking, because if you
     2        smoke a cigarette you may not get cancer, but smoking is
     3        said to be a cause of cancer.  The way Plaintiffs now want
     4        to plead implies that if you eat a McDonald's meal you are
     5        likely to get cancer from that meal, which is completely
     6        different to what was pleaded before and, obviously, to
     7        what is actually said in the leaflet and what we have
     8        prepared upon.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  At the end of the day, I may be with you on
    11        that.  Because the word "diet" is actually used in the
    12        text, it may be that at the end of the day I would prefer
    13         -- I stress "may" -- some intermediate meaning of the kind
    14        which I have just expounded, rather than the
    15        top-of-the-range meaning, if I can describe it that way,
    16        which the Plaintiffs wish to put in by amendment.  In a
    17        sense, that is another consideration.
    18
    19   MS. STEEL:  To me, the implication of F1 is that the individual
    20        meals are responsible for causing cancers of the breast and
    21        bowel and heart disease in their customers, as opposed to
    22        the nutritional content which relates to diet overall.
    23
    24   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You do not want to abandon the contention
    25        that a modified meaning such as the one I have put to you
    26        is justified, do you?
    27
    28   MS. STEEL:   I think the point is that we think that this is
    29        vastly stronger and that if this had been pleaded in the
    30        first place we might very well have gone about preparing
    31        the whole case in a very different manner.
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I would like you in your own time, when it is
    34        appropriate, to do that.  No doubt, you will help me on
    35        that because I would like to know in what way you think you
    36        suffered, if one looks at Dr. Barnard's statements and his
    37        evidence, Mr. Cannon's statements and his evidence, and
    38        Professor Crawford's statements and his evidence, and what
    39        you were seeking to obtain by way of cross-examination.
    40
    41   MS. STEEL:   We were advised to ask our witnesses
    42        about "cause".  That was two or three days before they were
    43        due to give evidence, which is entirely different
    44        from having prepared your case on that basis and asked them
    45        to look into specifically "cause" and -----
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am anxious not to enter into a debate which
    48        takes you off your line of argument, but what is suggested
    49        is that in July you were asking the Plaintiffs' witnesses
    50        about "cause". 
    51 
    52   MS. STEEL:  Looking through the transcripts, I do not actually 
    53        feel that we asked Mr. Wheelock very many questions
    54        about "cause", and where we did ask about "cause", it was
    55        because "cause" is one type of link, in much the same way
    56        as we asked about other types of link, about statistical
    57        associations, and things like that.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It might be thought that you asked Dr. Arnott
    60        about "cause" before you received a notice of any

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