Day 158 - 19 Jul 95 - Page 40
1 MR. MORRIS: Yes. I have no problem with your suggestion. It
2 is just that I was concerned to say what the thrust of the
3 first two lines -----
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. I think you had better keep your
6 application as it is with my suggestion as your fall-back
7 position because you are asking for more than I have
8 suggested.
9
10 MR. MORRIS: Right.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You want to have -- you have called them
13 national sections of the Company, but I understand what you
14 mean, no doubt the Plaintiffs, now that it has been aired
15 understand what you mean, and it is what Mr. Rampton
16 thought you might mean -- what you want is just you want
17 leave to plead, in effect, that McDonald's in other
18 countries, apart from the United Kingdom and the United
19 States and Brazil, because you have the Brazilian
20 restaurants, must have taken beef from rain forest regions
21 for the reasons which you have argued.
22
23 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
24
25 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Whether I go along with that or not, that is
26 what you are arguing to me.
27
28 MR. MORRIS: Yes. In the light of that, then I think we have
29 finished our application.
30
31 MR. RAMPTON: I will take your Lordship in just a moment to
32 Lord Justice Neill's judgment in the Court of Appeal on
33 25th March 1994. Before I do that, may I just quickly
34 clear up this argument on paragraph 2?
35
36 Your Lordship has it entirely right. If the pleading were
37 in the form that your Lordship has proposed to Mr. Morris,
38 I would have no objection to it. How much significance it
39 would have, given that on that single occasion Mr. Walker
40 sought permission of the head of the English company who,
41 it would appear, was to show Lord Vesty's letter to Fred
42 Turner in Chicago so as to explain precisely what had
43 happened in that single case in 1983. I do not have a
44 problem with it.
45
46 How it is that any reasonable or sane person could build
47 upon that single rather special event in England in 1983,
48 the inference that it must have happened in dozens of
49 countries throughout the world at the same time, I confess,
50 escapes me.
51
52 My Lord, the reference for the question of speciality and
53 permission is really the letter of 17th May 1983 from
54 Mr. David Walker -- he gave evidence about this -- which is
55 in section 4 of tab 5 of yellow XI at pages 12 and 13.
56 Page 12, which is the first page of the letter, Mr. Walker
57 writes, which he has confirmed: "I hasten to add" --
58 sorry.
59
60 MR. MORRIS: Can we just wait until we try to find the -----
