Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 29


     
     1        ability to go through a hundred and odd days of transcript
     2        in order to pick out the points.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I wish it only was a hundred and odd days.
     5
     6   MR. MORRIS:  Just for the employment ones, yes, we cannot
     7        compete with that, so I just wanted to ask you to----
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is helpful for you to point out that which
    10        you think is important among that which you said you had
    11        time to check through, but I obviously do not restrict
    12        myself to it.
    13
    14   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.  For example, a good example is Denise Pearce,
    15        I looked at last night at whenever it was, midnight.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There is no need to ----
    18
    19   MR. MORRIS:  I wanted to say as an example, because, you know,
    20        what I remember from her evidence, I had forgotten just how
    21        effectively, we would submit, her evidence had been
    22        rendered, what we submit, would be worthless, because of
    23        the cross-examination.  I am not saying that is, you know,
    24        a great credit to us.  All I am saying is that when
    25        Mr. Rampton slapped his document down with all the
    26        references, he no doubt would have put some references from
    27        Denise Pearce, but luckily I had a chance to analyse the
    28        testimony and it turned out, you know, to be as I put it
    29        this morning, that it all fell apart as she was in the
    30        witness box.
    31
    32        And I think that, you know, because we cannot do that job
    33        with other witnesses, I would just hope that you would
    34        check your notes carefully that you made for all the
    35        witnesses that Mr. Rampton wants to draw your attention to
    36        and be very careful about the sway that Mr. Rampton is
    37        going to put on the effect of their evidence, and the
    38        interpretation.  At the end of the day, it may make little
    39        difference in this part of the case because the
    40        documentation is pretty much clear as day anyway.
    41
    42        Just carrying on, Harriet Lamb - I am only dealing with a
    43        very few and very sketchy as a kind of brief skate over the
    44        live evidence - Harriet Lamb, a researcher who gathered
    45        information by working at McDonald's in Kentish Town in
    46        1987, told how she was researching for a pamphlet working
    47        for Big Mac about the reality of working conditions at
    48        McDonald's, which McDonald's of course subsequently sued
    49        and pulped, forced to be pulped.  The pamphlet publishers
    50        were sued by the Company, apologised in open court due to
    51        lack of funds, as she told the court, and had to pulp the
    52        booklet and the organisation closed down.
    53
    54        I am sure McDonald's were very pleased with themselves.
    55        But she said she stood by the contents of the work despite
    56        the so-called apology.  She wrote an article for the
    57        Guardian Newspaper, which was also sued, and then the
    58        Guardian apologised, she said because they could only
    59        afford to fight one libel case at a time.  She stood by
    60        everything that she had said and the research that she had

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