Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 43
1 we will lose our contracts".
2
3 And can I just say, moving on to -- I do not know if this
4 is a sort of standard, whether it is so obvious that people
5 never say it, obviously if someone is working for
6 McDonald's they are not going to be independent and
7 therefore their evidence should be scrutinised ever more
8 sharply because it is inevitable they are going to come and
9 promote their company.
10
11 Whereas our witnesses were all completely independent.
12 Virtually none of them had we ever met before. The
13 witnesses of facts, I do not believe any of them had a
14 grudge against McDonald's. Virtually none of them had
15 approached us. We were searching for witnesses to bring to
16 the case and none of our witnesses did we have any chance
17 to brief them before they wrote their statements. Just to
18 chat over the phone. Most of the statements were written
19 by those witnesses themselves.
20
21 And, you know -- well, I cannot give evidence here, but
22 I have said a number of times in the case we just said to
23 them just get down your experiences and your views on that
24 subject. And a lot of the witnesses, probably the
25 majority, we only met for the first time 15 minutes before
26 they were due to go in court and we think that the way they
27 conducted themselves in court, considering their lack of
28 what I am sure would be normal in any case, intensive
29 briefing, says something about the quality of their
30 evidence. So I think that that should be borne in mind.
31 Maybe briefing is not the right word, but whatever
32 solicitors do when they talk to witnesses beforehand.
33
34 The last point I would like to make about the overall view
35 of the way we conducted the case is that we particularly,
36 as you have probably noticed, tried to gain admissions from
37 McDonald's witnesses because, rightly or wrongly, we
38 believed that faced with McDonald's witnesses' word against
39 our witnesses, the fact that they can bring anybody they
40 want and they can brief them, that and the fact that they
41 are paid officials of a multi-national corporation or a UK
42 subsidiary, we always felt that we had to do a little bit
43 more than just ask our witnesses to come to the witness box
44 and tell the truth, but that we had to also gain
45 information and admissions from McDonald's own witnesses,
46 which we hope cannot be ignored.
47
48 I am going to go through the fact sheet. I can start doing
49 it now, if it is appropriate, not so much the fact sheet
50 but the issues, only in kind of overview.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, start now and then when it gets around
53 4 o'clock pick a moment when you want to break off.
54
55 MR. MORRIS: Right. Starting with the environment, this has
56 tended to focus on tropical forests in general including
57 the effects of soya production, but --
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I may have to divide it into economic
60 imperialism first, rainforest second, but they were very
