Day 307 - 27 Nov 96 - Page 21
1 the point on this issue. As far as I can see, McDonald's
2 have brought absolutely no evidence whatsoever to show in
3 any way, shape or form that myself or Mr. Morris did not
4 believe that the contents of the fact sheet were true.
5 Obviously, there is all the evidence to the contrary. I
6 mean, there is common sense apart from anything else; would
7 we really want to spend six years of our lives defending a
8 libel case over a leaflet which we thought was untrue? We
9 would have to be complete masochists, which obviously we
10 are not.
11
12 Moving on through the Plaintiffs' pleadings on page 5 of
13 the defence to counterclaim paragraph 3 alleges that
14 "notwithstanding the fact that they have never had any, or
15 any substantial, evidence to support the allegations made
16 in the leaflet, 'What's wrong with McDonald's', (referred
17 to in paragraph 3 of the Statement of Claim) or any of the
18 other terms containing allegations to the same or similar
19 effect and despite the lack of any or any substantial
20 support for the said allegations in the evidence served in
21 the main action by way of discovery and witness statements
22 on behalf of both the Plaintiffs and the Defendants since
23 the institution of proceedings...", and then they go on to
24 say we have continued to distribute and publish the
25 statements.
26
27 Now, the first part is the "notwithstanding the fact that
28 they have never had any or any substantial evidence to
29 support the allegations". This is just ludicrous, really,
30 this is a completely ludicrous statement on behalf of
31 McDonald's. We have called over 60 live witnesses plus
32 several Civil Evidence Act witnesses, and that simply
33 cannot be called insubstantial. I think anybody would
34 consider 60 witnesses a sufficient amount of evidence. If
35 there is not substantial evidence, then how has this case
36 lasted for over 300 days? I mean, obviously, the court
37 still has to weigh up the evidence, but if it was
38 irrelevant and insignificant, as McDonald's have tried to
39 suggest here, then the court would not have allowed the
40 case to proceed. It would have all been thrown out. It is
41 quite obvious, really, that, whatever decision at the end
42 of the day, it cannot be said that we have not got any
43 evidence to support our case.
44
45 Just in relation to the "no evidence to support any of the
46 other material", we would say that the evidence in this
47 trial that we have called and, for that matter, much of the
48 evidence called by the Plaintiffs, does support the other
49 leaflets too but we would say that this pleading is
50 actually irrelevant, since the main action is about the
51 fact sheet and we have no requirement, and indeed we are
52 not allowed to bring evidence, to prove the other leaflets.
53
54 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just while you are on that, is there any
55 other leaflet which you have got in mind which you are
56 concerned about on this point?
57
58 MS. STEEL: What do you mean by concerned about?
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Concerned in the sense that there may be
