Day 288 - 28 Oct 96 - Page 18


     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:   There is no dispute.
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is just the other way round it cannot
     4        work.  I cannot find a more serious meaning than the one
     5        Mr. Rampton has pleaded, find in his favour on that basis
     6        and then award his client damages for a more serious
     7        meaning than the one they have alleged.  But it does not
     8        stop you saying 'It means more, more than that, and we have
     9        justified it'.
    10
    11   MR. RAMPTON:   Well, they are not allowed to say it means more;
    12        they are allowed to say, 'If it means more it was true
    13        anyhow'.
    14
    15   MS. STEEL:   It was my understanding that we were entitled to
    16        justify up to...  No, that you could find a meaning up to
    17        their meaning but not higher than it, and that we are
    18        entitled to justify their meaning even if we do not agree
    19        with it.
    20
    21   MR JUSTICE BELL:  Absolutely, yes.
    22
    23   MS. STEEL:   Right.  This has come up before, but since the
    24        Plaintiffs' defamatory meaning is an inferential meaning
    25        that means that we are entitled to try to justify it by
    26        reference to all the other matters which were not
    27        specifically referred to in the fact sheet but on which
    28        evidence has been heard in court.  For example, all the
    29        detailed information about conditions for the broiler
    30        chickens - leg problems, the lighting and heating, and so
    31        on.  Well, actually, yes, those conditions are in fact
    32        referred to, or by inference, in the fact sheet anyway --
    33        sorry -- where it mentions that some of them, especially
    34        chickens and pigs, spend their lives in the entirely
    35        artificial conditions of huge factory farms.  So there is
    36        an inference there about the conditions under which they
    37        are reared.  I think on day 205 there was discussion about
    38        inferential meaning.
    39
    40   MR JUSTICE BELL:  I may be wrong but what it seems to me is that
    41        it is more a question of whether there is a general charge
    42        which you can then support with specific facts other than
    43        specific facts which are there.  It may well be that a lot
    44        of general charges are inferential ones.  In other words,
    45        you infer the general charge from a number of specific
    46        matters there.  I will hear Mr. Rampton in due course but
    47        it seems to me there is a general charge, it is a question
    48        of what it is.  You have used your words to say that one is
    49        utterly indifferent seems to me to be a general charge.
    50        Mr. Rampton may argue, no, it is utterly indifferent in 
    51        specific ways.  I do not know.  But if there is a general 
    52        charge then, subject to argument I hear, you are entitled 
    53        to justify it by matters which are outside the leaflet as
    54        well as those which are referred to in it.
    55
    56   MS. STEEL:   Yes.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  If I find the general meaning.
    59
    60   MR. RAMPTON:   My Lord, I think that is right, if I may say so.

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