Day 163 - 25 Sep 95 - Page 44
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you make an enquiry and decide to make an
2 admission in respect of one of these allegations, supposing
3 I gave leave to amend, then you would have the choice to
4 leave it there and say it is a drop in the ocean or, if you
5 thought there was some innocent explanation for real
6 mitigation, whether it was worth calling any evidence to
7 that effect, if there was documentation then you might be
8 under an obligation to disclose, supposing it is in your
9 possession, custody or power and supposing it was
10 documentation which what was relevant. On the other hand,
11 for all I know, and I am talking about employment
12 conditions now, not the hygiene, a fairly short enquiry
13 would find what the situation was in relation to the
14 allegation, discover whether, (and I notice a number of
15 these things are five or so years ago) there was any
16 documentation to be discovered at all.
17
18 MR. RAMPTON: Sometimes there is; sometimes there is not. That
19 is the trouble. If I had had these amendments, let us say,
20 at the beginning of August because it happens
21 Mrs. Brinley-Codd and I have just been to Chicago to see
22 our clients off on holiday, if we had these proposed
23 amendments, say, at the beginning of the middle of August,
24 maybe I would now be in a position to say to your Lordship
25 that your Lordship does not need to worry about these, they
26 are all admitted or they are not worth the paper they are
27 written on and we can deal it all by a dozen documents.
28
29 The trouble is at the moment in the light of this
30 application I have absolutely no idea. What I do know is
31 that it is very unlikely, I mean this is my own view, that
32 my clients will be disposed to admit any significant
33 proportion of these, for the reason that in the generality
34 of cases, as in the Macally case, what happens is, oh, yes,
35 all right, the event happened, but so far as justification
36 of a libel on McDonald's Corporation is concerned, the
37 matter does not stop there because the question which the
38 court has to answer, in our respectful submission, is first
39 of all what degree of responsibility can the Corporation be
40 said to have for what happened; second, it having had, what
41 steps could the Corporation take to ensure that it did not
42 happen again?
43
44 As far as I know, every single one of these cases may fall
45 into that category. If that were so, the possibility of my
46 being instructed to admit them is quite naturally
47 non-existent because a "yes, but" is not an admission.
48
49 I do not say, and could not I think say, that if the
50 Defendants had recently come upon (I emphasise the word
51 "recently") a piece of paper from Head Office in Oak Brook
52 which said, for example, and this is sheer fantasy, "What
53 are we going to do with all those rain forest trees from
54 Costa Rica? Shall we cut them down now for grazing land or
55 wait a bit?" that I could sensibly resist an amendment.
56
57 My Lord, given the amount of evidence your Lordship already
58 has on employment, given if one stands back from these
59 allegations and looks to see what their effect truly is,
60 given what that might add, assuming they were all proved to
