Day 276 - 09 Jul 96 - Page 30


     
     1        concerned with the group received, or the group itself
     2        received, were when the five of us who were originally sued
     3        received the writs in September 1990.  There were no
     4        letters before then to ask us to stop distributing the
     5        leaflet or to say that McDonald's considered that the
     6        leaflet was defamatory.  The very first contact we had
     7        about the fact sheet was the writs.  And there was no
     8        contact about any other leaflet as well, apart from this
     9        one in 1984.
    10
    11             To me, the clear intention of McDonald's putting this
    12        passage in their press release is to say to the public,
    13        'Look how reasonable we have been and how unreasonable the
    14        defendants are.  They have ignored all our letters.  We
    15        were at the end of our tether.  We had no choice but to
    16        take this action', whereas the reality is completely the
    17        opposite, that the first thing McDonald's did, as far as I
    18        was concerned and as far as anyone was concerned with
    19        regard to the fact sheet, was to issue writs against us and
    20        to demand that we apologise otherwise the proceedings would
    21        be continued with.
    22
    23             In the final paragraph on that page, where McDonald's
    24        say that in September 1990 they "... wrote to the five core
    25        members of the group, advised them that the leaflet was
    26        defamatory and that proceedings had been issued.  They were
    27        invited to apologise and undertake to stop
    28        repeating/publishing the allegations.  As a result three of
    29        the group did admit in court that the leaflet was
    30        libelous.  They apologised and undertook not to repeat the
    31        lies."
    32
    33             I was well aware that the reason that the other three
    34        people reluctantly decided to apologise was just because
    35        when we went to get legal advise we were basically told
    36        that it is extremely difficult to fight a libel case as a
    37        defendant because the onus is on you to prove everything
    38        from first hand sources not from reports in books or
    39        medical journals or scientific journals, or anything like
    40        that; that the libel laws were very complex and it was
    41        extremely difficult to fight a case, and that if you had no
    42        money you faced a nigh on impossible task and that you
    43        would be lucky to even get to the trial itself.  It was
    44        more than likely that because you did not know the legal
    45        procedures that you had to meet and you could not employ
    46        somebody to draft all the documents for you, the pleadings
    47        and so on, that you would fail to meet some pretrial stage
    48        and that your case would be struck out before getting to
    49        court.
    50
    51             We were told that the longer the case went on the
    52        higher the costs would be, and so the advice was, well,
    53        just the sensible thing to do in the circumstances is what
    54        everybody virtually is forced into doing is to apologise
    55        even though you do not believe that, you know that the
    56        apology you are giving is justified.  I am 100 per cent
    57        clear in my mind that the reason those three people
    58        apologised was not because they thought the fact sheet was
    59        untrue, but because of the overwhelming odds stacked
    60        against us in trying to fight this case with no resources

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