Day 058 - 30 Nov 94 - Page 36
1 have been in relation to the amount of forest it took to
2 provide McDonald's with packaging.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will just wait and see what, if any,
5 evidence you call in relation to it. As I have tried to
6 say before, my understanding when looking at the meaning of
7 a statement -- we are talking of written statements here
8 which is alleged to be libelous -- is it does not matter
9 what the author actually meant it to mean, it is what the
10 ordinary reader would understand it to mean, because the
11 ordinary reader does not have the advantage of the thought
12 processes of the author.
13
14 You may be right, as a matter of interesting explanation,
15 if that be so the topic arose -- I do not want to go back
16 into it -- when we were talking about what "link" might
17 mean. There we are. Can you just remind me so can I make
18 a mental note of it now? The 150 tonnes of pulpwood and
19 180 tonnes of sawmill residue which appear at the bottom of
20 page 4 of Mr. Mallinson's statement which was served a few
21 days ago and which became his evidence-in-chief, that came
22 from the document I looked at the day before yesterday, did
23 it, the Iggesund document?
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord.
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is the status of that document at the
28 moment?
29
30 MR. RAMPTON: I do not know what the status of that document is.
31 My Lord, I do not really mind whether one uses the
32 figures provided by Iggesund to Mr. Mallinson -- if I need
33 to, I can could impress that, I suppose, with a Civil
34 Evidence Act statement -- or whether one uses the figures
35 provided by Mr. Kouchoukos on the basis of what Perseco --
36 sorry, not Perseco, the basis of what his supplies had told
37 him.
38
39 The fact is either way one arrives for the United States at
40 a total figure of cut down trees or, rather, I should say,
41 reconstituted trees, because that is in fact what they are,
42 there is only a proportion of each tree, and if you work
43 backwards from Mr. Kouchoukos's figures you get a total
44 acreage or square area of reconstituted trees for the
45 United States of 9.4 square miles and for Europe, I think,
46 something in the ordinary of 1.4.
47
48 On those figures, if what the leaflet means is, where it
49 says, "The truth is it takes 800 square miles of forest
50 just to keep them supplied with paper for one year", if
51 that means that 800 square miles of forest throughout the
52 world have to be cut down every year just to supply
53 McDonald's with paper for one year, why, then the sort of
54 calculations which Mr. Mallinson has been prompted to do in
55 relation to the south of Scotland and Mr. Thompson have
56 absolutely no significance whatsoever.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The short answer to all this is that it is
59 not in civil litigation for a judge to say what evidence he
60 would or would not -- he can say what evidence he does not
