Day 164 - 26 Sep 95 - Page 47


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Your real point is that there might be
     3        something there which, although is something completely
     4        different perhaps, you could show to be wrong or that it
     5        did not happen so it goes to credibility?
     6
     7   MS. STEEL:   There is that point.  There is also the point about
     8        that it does give a perspective on whether or not this was
     9        a major campaign and whether or not we and other people
    10        were involved in lots of other campaigns.  I think I may
    11        have said in my statement, if I did not I was quite
    12        involved in a campaign against the World Bank at the time
    13        and I do know that that was discussed at meetings from time
    14        to time.  For example, things like that may indicate what
    15        kind of, you know, what we were actually involved in at the
    16        time.
    17
    18   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.
    19
    20   MS. STEEL:  I do not have Mr. Clare's notes, so I am not sure
    21        whether there are any particular examples, but the general
    22        principle is the same, that even if it is not directly
    23        about McDonald's, it is relevant for the purposes of
    24        enabling us to advance our case or damage that of
    25        McDonald's.  I do not think there is anything else I want
    26        to say.
    27
    28   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I hope that we have done what we should
    29        have done.  This exercise was done by me and Mr. Atkinson,
    30        not by the solicitors.  So if there is any error in it we
    31        accept responsibility for it.  We do not believe there is.
    32        We have obeyed which we take to be the correct principles.
    33        We have blanked out only those parts of the notes which we
    34        deem to be wholly irrelevant to the issues in this action
    35        to which the, notes or any part of them, might be thought
    36        to relate.  In a sense, of course, unless Ms. Steel can
    37        satisfy your Lordship that, on the face of the blanking
    38        out, we have been wrong about that, that should be the end
    39        of it.  But, in fairness, it is only right that I should
    40        tell your Lordship I believe how we went about it.
    41
    42        We conceived that the relevant issues as they arise in the
    43        pleadings were publication, malice, the claim for the
    44        injunction and the Defence to Counterclaim.
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  By the "counterclaim" you mean anything which
    47        might indicate whether the Defendants believed or did not
    48        believe ----
    49
    50   MR. RAMPTON:  Partly that, my Lord, and partly also the 
    51        promulgation of further material of a similar kind, since 
    52        the leaflets complained of in the counterclaim are not 
    53        published until 1994, to which those leaflets might be said
    54        to be a defence.  So that everything emanating from this
    55        group concerning McDonald's with the participation, direct
    56        or indirect, would be relevant.
    57
    58        Taking that those issues as our starting point, it seemed
    59        to us that as an adjunct of those issues what mattered was
    60        in these notes the Defendants' involvement in the

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