Day 312 - 11 Dec 96 - Page 23
1 additional burdens of proof for us to show in the words
2 complained of, it does imply that they are submitting that
3 they, as a Corporation, are equivalent to a human being
4 that has a morality or a conscience or ethics, or anything
5 like that, and we would submit that the effect of this
6 paragraph, say, and preceding paragraphs, is that they
7 cannot act like a person, they cannot be damaged in the
8 same way as a human being, and they have to show, they
9 cannot interpret the words in that they cannot be
10 defamatory of a corporation to say that they are
11 unconscionable because they do not have a conscience, they
12 only have, you know, basic business practices, and they
13 would have to show that it damaged those practices in a
14 specific way.
15
16 MS. STEEL: Number 6: in this respect the Defendants submit
17 that the arrangement that the Plaintiffs made with Veggies
18 is of fundamental importance. Under that arrangement the
19 Plaintiffs agree to allow Veggies to publish a version of
20 the fact sheet which is complained of in this case and they
21 should not now be permitted to claim that the self same
22 words contained in the fact sheet complained of in this
23 case entitles them to compensation; on the contrary, it is
24 fair and proper for the court to assume that the
25 Plaintiffs, having seen and considered the Veggies
26 document, were content for its publication to continue,
27 albeit with minor variations, precisely because it
28 considered its contents to be justified or to be not such
29 as to damage the Plaintiffs' trading reputation. In any
30 event, the Plaintiffs cannot have it both ways; either the
31 Veggies leaflet has caused them no loss, in which case the
32 fact sheet complained of in this action can hardly have
33 caused them loss either, or the Veggies leaflet has caused
34 loss but with their agreement, and that as a result of that
35 that loss is now indistinguishable from any further alleged
36 loss caused by the London Greenpeace fact sheet that we are
37 being sued over.
38
39 Most notably on this point, the Plaintiffs now say that the
40 nutrition section of the fact sheet is the most damaging to
41 their reputation. Yet they made no complaint whatsoever in
42 relation to this part of the Veggies leaflet, and that
43 includes the fact that they did not make any complaint of
44 the satirical cartoon and banner headlines. Obviously, as
45 you are aware, the context of the nutrition section of the
46 leaflet was exactly the same in the Veggies fact sheet as
47 in the London Greenpeace one.
48
49 No 7. The Defendants further submit that the court should
50 have recourse to the European Convention on Human Rights in
51 arriving at its judgment. Libel is a common law concept
52 and the Defendants submit so far as possible all
53 substantive and procedural rules and principles of libel
54 applied in this case should be interpreted and applied in
55 conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights.
56
57 No 8. In particular, the rules that in order to make out
58 the defence of justification a defendant must prove the
59 substantial truth of every material fact. This rule should
60 be disapplied in this case, for three reasons: one, that
