Day 313 - 13 Dec 96 - Page 24
1 had been applying for documents about that from Germany and
2 it had been stated pre-trial that Dr. Schumm would be
3 coming, their witness on that matter, and therefore there
4 was no need for discovery, and in the event he was not
5 called. When we persisted with, I think either discovery
6 or interrogatories, on the matter -- no, when we persisted
7 on that... I do not know, I cannot remember now, but the
8 point was that Mr. Nicholson stated in an interrogatory
9 that the German McDonald's had never used any Brazilian
10 soya. He said, no, to the best of his belief, which of
11 course is not true and established to be not true through
12 the evidence of Mr. Cesca and just general analysis of
13 Dr. Schumm's statement.
14
15 So, that is something where we believe, obviously,
16 documentation would have cleared that all up, and we may
17 have been left with an unsafe, inaccurate interrogatory
18 answer.
19
20 Secondly, on the rainforest issue of maps. It was only due
21 to a casual remark by Dr. Gonzales that we established
22 there was a map, which is a very important map, in Brazil
23 which we had no discovery, and also it was only because
24 Mr. Cesca happened to bring some documents in a brief case
25 that we got the maps and the documentation relating to
26 Costa Rica and Guatemala, despite the fact that he had
27 sworn an affidavit saying there was not any relevant
28 documentation.
29
30 So, again, we do feel that the discovery on rainforest has
31 been almost non-existent and we have only got certain
32 documents through strenuous efforts and luck, for example
33 about the UK importation of Brazilian beef.
34
35 The last thing I want to say about the documentation is
36 that the absolutely key document of McDonald's own
37 investigation into the death of Mark Hopkins which had a
38 lot of, we would say, admissions about lack of safety in
39 the Company on the company floor, shop floor, had not been
40 disclosed to us until two or three days before their
41 witness on that matter came into the witness box, despite
42 the fact, of course, that it was in the pleadings years
43 before that we had a witness lined up to come who, in the
44 event, did not need to be called because of that
45 documentation, we felt.
46
47 So we do not need to give any more examples, but we can
48 just say it is clear that it is inaccurate to say that
49 McDonald's have given full discovery, and that it is clear
50 that we believed, rightly, that McDonald's were withholding
51 documentation that was relevant to the issues in the case,
52 including the pleadings issues.
53
54 MS. STEEL: Before I go on to the final point about damages,
55 there were actually a few little points that I wanted to
56 raise from what, I think, you asked Mr. Rampton in court
57 the other day about the counterclaim matters. There was
58 the leaflet at pink 1A, tab 27. Mr. Rampton said that this
59 was a foundation for a basis of belief that
60 London Greenpeace had been written to and therefore the
