Day 158 - 19 Jul 95 - Page 48
1 MR. RAMPTON: But that is all. It does not, as a matter of law
2 or of logic, disqualify us from saying: "Well, at this
3 stage in the case we are going to take a point in relation
4 to this new proposed pleading which, admittedly, we could
5 have taken in relation to an old pleading about a different
6 part of the world, but did not take." That is bad luck on
7 us; it is our fault, and we have to live with the
8 consequences, and we have done so; and we have made our
9 discovery and we are calling evidence in relation to
10 Costa Rica and Guatemala. That does not mean to say that
11 we have to go through the same process just because we
12 missed the point on a previous occasion. I make it now --
13 your Lordship may say: "Well, you cannot be inconsistent",
14 or something, I do not know -- but I make it now in the
15 belief that it is a valid objection to this pleading at
16 this stage of the case.
17
18 My Lord, I pass from that to the other ground of objection
19 which is that, in truth, once this proposed pleading has
20 been dismantled and exposed for what it truly is, the
21 Defendants do not have any reasonable ground to suppose
22 that evidence is or may be forthcoming to support what is
23 here pleaded.
24
25 If I may summarise it, our belief is that the existing
26 material -- and I do not necessarily mean by that just
27 evidence, because grounds for belief can and often do go
28 beyond strict admissible evidence -- what all that material
29 known to the Defendants provides a reasonable ground for
30 believing is this, we submit, that McDonald's have never
31 used any rain forest or ex-rainforest beef from Brazil,
32 whether for use in Brazil itself or anywhere else in the
33 world.
34
35 My Lord, I say that, I hope with conviction, because of the
36 material which is available to demonstrate that it is
37 likely to be right. My Lord, I put on one side for the
38 present purposes Mr. Shane and Mr. Monbiot who, I regret to
39 say (it is no fault of theirs), speak in very broad
40 generalities without any specificity as to dates and areas
41 and sources of supply. In particular, of course, they do
42 not, because they cannot, provide any evidence against
43 McDonald's. So I put them on one side.
44
45 Material which is available is the evidence of Mr. Walker
46 about his trip to Brazil and the basis on which the
47 Brazilian balance sheet beef was taken in 1983, 80 tonnes
48 on that one occasion; the evidence of Dr. Gomez Gonzales
49 about where the domestic sources of supply are from
50 McDonald's in Brazil; the Vesty letter and the surrounding
51 correspondence; and the Braslo map.
52
53 When one summarises that material -- and I have done it by
54 putting it all on a copy of some pages from The Times
55 Atlas -- one sees this, in my respectful submission, that
56 there is no possibility (and I put it as strongly as that)
57 that any of the beef which is habitually used by McDonald's
58 in Brazil for Brazilian purposes since 1979 has ever come
59 from any land which was ever rain forest within living
60 memory.
