Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 57


     
     1        back, and one can still validly ask the question ---
     2
     3   MR. RAMPTON:  Oh, yes.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  -- without any direct effect.  From a chain
     6        of causation which is indirect to a degree, one can still
     7        step back and validly ask the question:  are McDonald's
     8        responsible for those trees coming down?
     9
    10   MR. RAMPTON:  One can ask the question, but it only provides an
    11        affirmative answer to the question: is it a justification?
    12
    13   MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:  If the responsibility is of a culpable kind; and
    16        one of the elements in answering that question, that second
    17        question, is the responsibility of a kind which is
    18        culpable, one of the elements in answering that question is
    19        the question of scale.  That is an inescapable feature of
    20        this part of the leaflet, that the destruction of the
    21        rainforest for which McDonald's are alleged to be
    22        responsible is on a vast scale.  I have used the word
    23        "vast", because that is the word that is in the
    24        leaflet: "50 acres every minute", "helping the McDonald's
    25        empire to wreck the planet", "800 square miles of
    26        rainforest just to make paper every year".
    27
    28   MR. JUSTICE BELL: If the general sting in B could be justified
    29        by evidence of indirect responsibility for the destruction
    30        of rainforest, would the specific sting of direct
    31        destruction in C remain unjustified?  Is that freestanding
    32        on its own?  I mean, is there room -- let us forget the
    33        evidence for the moment, just so I can pose the question.
    34
    35   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  I am trying as hard as I can to forget the
    36        evidence for the moment.
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If the situation is this, that McDonald's are
    39        indirectly responsible for destruction of the rainforest
    40        because, although they do not chop down trees or spray
    41        Agent Orange on it themselves, or ask people, or tell
    42        people, instruct people to go out and do it, as night
    43        follows the day, the result of what they are doing is
    44        destruction of significant areas of rainforest.  Then, in
    45        those circumstances, would you be able to say:  yes, but to
    46        say that they have used lethal poison to destroy vast areas
    47        of rainforest themselves to create is not justified?
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  No.  It would not add very much.  It would not be
    50        justified.  But whether it made any difference to the 
    51        ultimate result is doubtful.  I would, however, say this: 
    52        perhaps the significance -- apart from the fact that it 
    53        said quite a lot about the factual integrity of this
    54        leaflet, that it is not true -- the significance, perhaps,
    55        in the context of what your Lordship has been putting to me
    56        of the allegation of active destruction, using lethal
    57        poisons, is that there is no escape on meaning, whichever
    58        one route takes, direct or indirect, of -- what shall
    59        I say -- knowledge and intention.  It is quite obvious that
    60        if you use lethal poisons actively to destroy vast areas of

Prev Next Index