Day 300 - 14 Nov 96 - Page 33
1 the meaning of nutrition, you do not know exactly where the
2 goalposts are until I have given my judgment, I am afraid.
3
4 MR. MORRIS: If I can say, it probably will not -- I mean, you
5 know ----
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You have made it absolutely clear. What you
8 are setting out, what you say you have established is both
9 limbs; instigating a request for something undesirable,
10 however occasional and polite the request on the one hand,
11 and winding up the child so that it will repeatedly ask,
12 that is to pester or, to use your word, harass the parent.
13 You say it is a compounding of the two in this case.
14
15 MS. STEEL: I think it is accepted by McDonald's witnesses as
16 well. They might not accept the unhealthy food part, but
17 they certainly accept the pestering bit.
18
19 MR. RAMPTON: No, we do not accept the pestering bit. Pester
20 power is an emotive term used by the enemies of the fast
21 food industry.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Carry on, but I have never understood them to
24 accept 'pester'.
25
26 MS. STEEL: I have read out I don't know how many quotes where
27 the Plaintiffs' witnesses are actually agreeing that there
28 is pester power, that children do pester their parents as a
29 result of McDonald's ads. I don't know how they can carry
30 on denying it.
31
32 MR. RAMPTON: This little bait, if I can call it that, has
33 become a snake biting its tail. It is perfectly well and
34 quite sensibly accepted on this side of the court that the
35 principal effect of advertising to children is that when
36 the choice for the family comes, 'which restaurant shall we
37 go to', it shall be McDonald's rather than somewhere else.
38 That is number one.
39
40 Number two, quite obviously if the children are the people
41 who receive the advertising, they are going to have an
42 input into that debate. Whether you call it pestering or
43 nagging or whatever, depends on your emotional point of
44 view. But a plain, cold fact as a parent, anybody who has
45 ever lived in the world, the fact is that children ask for
46 things which they do not have the resources to provide for
47 themselves.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You must get on with your submissions. What
50 is not accepted is that it amounts to an invitation to
51 pester. I will make my decision about that. But what you
52 must not do is work on the basis that the witnesses have
53 accepted pestering.
54
55 You may have a very strong case from McDonald's own
56 publications and witnesses that the idea of advertising is
57 to get children to request their parents to go to
58 McDonald's, but there is an issue, and I may have to
59 resolve it, as to whether it is designed to get them to
60 pester, to use the word you like using, their parent.
