Day 053 - 22 Nov 94 - Page 42
1 statements. In some of them, I have suggested Dr. Barnard
2 was one -- I will not say without rechecking in detail that
3 every time he used the word "link" he meant something other
4 than causal link, but I think just about every time he did
5 use the word "link" in relation to high in fat of various
6 kinds or meat, he was talking "causal link".
7
8 MS. STEEL: In terms of cross-examination of the Plaintiffs'
9 witnesses though, in particular, we did -----
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I appreciate it was not all the time then,
12 some of the time, but there we are.
13
14 MS. STEEL: It was not always clarified what they meant by it.
15 Really, 15 touches on that in that, as I say, we do not
16 really feel that we have cross-examined the Plaintiffs'
17 witnesses, in particular, as much as we could have done
18 about what they meant by "link" and pinned them down on
19 that.
20
21 Going on to No. 16, from what I can remember, all the
22 authorities referred to by Mr. Rampton yesterday on
23 allowing amendments were not specifically about meanings in
24 a libel action. We would argue that it is a different
25 situation to change their meaning than it is to allow other
26 sorts of amendments that have become necessary or whatever
27 through a change in circumstances, or changing facts or
28 additional facts that have come to light.
29
30 We would say that there are no new facts which have come to
31 light which could have led to the Plaintiffs wanting to
32 change their meaning. The only thing that has changed is
33 that the Plaintiffs' witnesses have now admitted that there
34 is a link.
35
36 In point (c), as Mr. Rampton referred to it in his third
37 skeleton argument, I think it is -- I think he did mention
38 it yesterday as well -- that "The Court cannot find a
39 meaning more injurious than the meaning alleged by the
40 Plaintiff"; that means that because the pleaded meaning of
41 the Plaintiffs was "link", if it is now changed to
42 something higher -- if the pleaded meaning was "link", we
43 only needed to justify up to link, and we did not need to
44 go to "cause" which is higher. So, if it is now changed
45 to "cause", then that is prejudicial to our case, and also
46 if the "nutritional content" is changed to "meals", that is
47 highly prejudicial to our case, because it is a much higher
48 meaning than the one originally pleaded and the one
49 originally pleaded in the Statement of Claim and,
50 consequently, what we pleaded in our defence and
51 particulars of justification and fair comment. Had the
52 meaning been a higher one pleaded initially then,
53 obviously, we would have to look at that and see whether we
54 could deal with that and wanted to deal with that in our
55 pleadings or applied to strike out, of course, although
56 that is a slightly different and separate point.
57
58 The point is, really, that we did not prepare, we did not
59 do all the preparations for our case to go to the higher
60 meaning that the Plaintiffs are now wanting to change to.
