Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 12


     
     1        or McDonald's meal causes these illnesses, when actually he
     2        came to give his evidence he took a step back from that.
     3        Although he did at one stage, prompted by Mr. Morris,
     4        actually mention McDonald's products, unsurprisingly,
     5        perhaps, in the light of all the evidence on this topic
     6        that your Lordship has heard, he did not make (and I would
     7        suggest no sensible medical person or scientific person
     8        would ever make) the attempt to assert that that meaning
     9        was true.
    10
    11   MS. STEEL:   Can I just say, he did not say it in his statement
    12        either.  I did go through and look at it.  They are the
    13        types of products that make a contribution.
    14
    15   MR. RAMPTON:  We read his statement as foreshadowing, as I say,
    16        a possible attempt to assert the truth of the proposition
    17        that McDonald's food causes these illnesses without
    18        qualification.
    19
    20        This is where I come, perhaps, to what may be the more
    21        important part of this application:  I say three things,
    22        first -- I say this emphatically and clearly -- I do not
    23        accept what the Defendants have told your Lordship about
    24        their being taken in any way by surprise.  I do not find it
    25        credible on the materials which are before your Lordship.
    26        They are (and they have shown they are) very careful in
    27        their reading of the transcripts of the various hearings,
    28        whether they be evidence, argument or rulings.  I simply do
    29        not accept their assertion that they have not known at
    30        least since July of last year what the true issue was on
    31        this part of the case.
    32
    33        My Lord, even if I did accept that, I do not accept that
    34        their finding themselves in this position, if indeed they
    35        do, is anybody's fault but their own.  I do not and
    36        I cannot ask your Lordship, as it were, to penalise them
    37        for that failure to read the plain words on the page which
    38        appeared so often over the last year.  But I do say this
    39        (which is, I think, the submission I made on the last
    40        occasion) that it would be quite wrong for your Lordship to
    41        penalise the Plaintiffs because the Defendants for some
    42        reason of their own have failed to appreciate what the case
    43        is actually about.
    44
    45        My Lord, I go to the third stage which is, perhaps, the one
    46        which matters most.  When one has read the
    47        cross-examination of Professor Wheelock, of Dr. Arnott, the
    48        evidence-in-chief of Professor Crawford, of Mr. Cannon and
    49        above all of Dr. Barnard, one asks oneself, in my
    50        respectful submission, this question:  "What more could the 
    51        Defendants possibly expect to extract from witnesses of 
    52        that kind on the question:  'Is the relationship between 
    53        diet and cancer a causal one and, if so, in what sense'?"
    54
    55        The whole of the evidence of Dr. Barnard is concerned with
    56        that question, sometimes answering the Defendants,
    57        sometimes answering your Lordship.  It goes without saying,
    58        of course, that the whole of my cross-examination was
    59        devoted to the same question.  Indeed, on this area of the
    60        case I doubt it would be possible to find a question from

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