Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 51
1 meetings of London Greenpeace and followed people to their
2 homes, before serving them with writs alleging libel in the
3 fact sheet, demanding damages and costs and seeking an end
4 to the campaign."
5
6 I pause there to observe that there is, true enough, a
7 claim for damages in the writ, which, in the Queen's Bench
8 Division at least, there usually is; but it says nothing of
9 course of the letter which went with the writ.
10
11 Then it goes on: "McDonald's know they are guilty and not
12 the caring green company they try to make out, so they have
13 turned to the legal system to suppress free speech and fair
14 criticism", and so on and so forth.
15
16 Then one sees towards the end of the page -- it is a
17 one-page document, apparently: "The fight against their
18 evil empire must continue. The campaign needs your
19 support."
20
21 My Lord, the final document in this short series -----
22
23 MR. MORRIS: Can I comment? The one that says "10.90" at the
24 top, that cannot be possibly be the date this leaflet was
25 done, because we did not find out about the infiltrators
26 until later, I would have thought. I do not know who did
27 this letter, but that is all I can say. I do not know
28 about the timing.
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not know what -----
31
32 MR. MORRIS: I do not know who put that date on or what it
33 means.
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: There is no date, there is no internal date in the
36 document.
37
38 The next document is perhaps the most important of all,
39 because if one is considering what McDonald's state of mind
40 might have been -- never mind the truth of what they wrote
41 in their response -- if one is considering what McDonald's
42 state of mind might have been when they said that the
43 Defendants -- and if this is the sting of it -- had failed
44 to give a reasonable response to their complaints, that is
45 at pink 1A, 86, which is the one that I mentioned this
46 morning.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is the A5.
49
50 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord. This is a two-page document, this is
51 a McDonald's -----
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: 66?
54
55 MR. RAMPTON: 86, my Lord. I am sorry. 86, 1A 86. It is the
56 third document in the second appendix to the counterclaim,
57 to the Defence to Counterclaim. This in the context of:
58 could it ever be found that McDonald's reference to
59 unanswered and unreasonable refusal to answer complaints
60 was malicious? This is a key document. This is written at
