Day 312 - 11 Dec 96 - Page 19
1 MS. STEEL: And also, on their own claim that the leaflet was
2 distributed on 16th October 1989 outside Head Office, if
3 they had brought proceedings soon after that it would have
4 meant it was easier to gather evidence and track specific
5 witnesses to counter the Plaintiffs' assertions.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I mean, that is one of the points we are
8 making from this. In the light of the above points, those
9 five points, it has been impossible due to the passage of
10 time for the Defendants to gather substantial amounts of
11 material relevant to the publication issue, and other
12 issues, regarding research, contacting witnesses for the
13 relevant years, et cetera, and also, of course, to obtain
14 discovery from the Plaintiffs related to the relevant time.
15
16 Point 10. Further, we submit that the Plaintiffs, by their
17 agreement with Veggies Limited over the continued
18 distribution of the London Greenpeace fact sheet, with
19 minimal changes to the words complained of, guarantee the
20 continued circulation of the words complained of before,
21 during and after the current action. There can, therefore,
22 be no proper or continuing legal basis for the current
23 action in accordance with the spirit of the defamation
24 laws. That is, we would say, an abuse of procedure.
25
26 Point 11: the wide range of non-defamatory and/or
27 "every-day" criticisms contained in the words complained
28 of and in the Statement of Claim, for example the nature of
29 Mcjobs, existence of environment/index.html">litter, poor quality foods, links
30 between diet and disease, advertising and being unethical,
31 et cetera, are all part of the fabric of valued public
32 opinion and criticism and should not be subjected to a
33 libel action and judgment; on the contrary, the right to
34 hold such opinions, whether true or false, I would add,
35 without fear of writs, should be robustly protected. This
36 has been the main cause for the oppressive and inconvenient
37 link and scope of this case.
38
39 I mean, the Plaintiffs could have decided, or could have
40 been ordered, not to take up... The bulk of this case has
41 been about what we would call basic common sense and
42 matters of valued opinion, in fact all of it we could
43 argue, but we submit that the extensive the legal attack by
44 the Plaintiffs on almost the entirety of the issues raised
45 in the fact sheet shows the clear political nature of their
46 legal strategy.
47
48 Their strategy seems to have been that they were seeking to
49 use the court case as a show trial against people they
50 thought would be, they were convinced would be, unable to
51 defend themselves and,, having successfully denied the
52 Defendants a jury trial, were aiming for a quick judgment
53 which on 21st December 1993 they had forecast as there
54 would be a three to four week trial which would publicly be
55 used by them to vindicate their corporate image, i.e. they
56 were seeing the court case as another tool for their global
57 publicity directed at the public.
58
59 The result would be, if they were to be successful in this,
60 or if they had have been successful in what they originally
