Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 54
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Turning it round, if the meaning were as
2 I have suggested it might be, all that does is bring in the
3 possibility, which you would argue against anyway, that
4 even if the Defendants cannot justify culpable
5 responsibility for starvation in the Third World by way of
6 land purchase and eviction, one has to ask oneself, if they
7 justified the power of the money to export beef to the US
8 and the drawing of Third World countries to export staple
9 crops, one would then have to say: well, does that justify
10 the overall sting?
11
12 MR. RAMPTON: I mean, plainly, it could never do.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Query whether it could justify the sting of
15 being to blame for starvation in the Third World.
16
17 MR. RAMPTON: Quite.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Query -- and I can see how you would say, no,
20 it never can -- it cannot justify a sting that McDonald's
21 have caused starvation in the Third World by buying all
22 this land off the rulers and then clearing the small
23 farmers off it.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: Buying the land is not defamatory, but forcing the
26 eviction of small farmers plainly is. I am looking now --
27 and Mrs. Brinley-Codd has kindly written out what
28 your Lordship read out, she has taken it off Caseview --
29 and I am bound to say that I do believe that the second and
30 thirds reasons that your Lordship gave are barely
31 defamatory at all. One might actually come to the
32 conclusion, if that is what the leaflet meant, that they
33 are conferring a benefit on the poor countries, because of
34 course they are getting hard currency in exchange for their
35 beef and their crops. But if they are defamatory, they are
36 barely so. They could fall to be separately justified; and
37 if they were defamatory and were so separately justified,
38 they might knock a couple of bob off the damages for the
39 main allegation, which is causing starvation in the
40 Third World and, as an adjunct to that, evicting the
41 farmers so that McDonald's can put the cattle on the land.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: My next query -- and I think I have got it in
44 relation to rainforest as well -- is, is this section
45 defamatory of the Second Plaintiff as well as the
46 First Plaintiff?
47
48 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. Can I just find where I dealt with that, so
49 that I can see what my answer is so far? Yes. In so far
50 as starvation is concerned, plainly, I would argue that
51 that is defamatory of both Plaintiffs, because the
52 Second Plaintiffs are part of the McDonald's worldwide
53 empire and -- I use that word because of the words
54 "economic imperialism". They are an active part of that
55 empire. They are not a holding company, or some such
56 thing, sitting in Delaware. The ordinary reader would be
57 bound to say, well, they are making a contribution; by
58 their use of these materials, they are making a
59 contribution -- and of course by the profits they make in
60 this country to flow back to the Corporation in America --
