Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 21
1 because the point is it is McDonald's who are the
2 plaintiffs and all we are concerned about is things which
3 are defamatory of them.
4
5 MR. MORRIS: Right.
6
7 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It may be that an allegation is made about
8 multi-nationals generally, but that must, must it not, be
9 deemed to include McDonald's, but you tell me if it is
10 not.
11
12 MR. MORRIS: Well, the thing is, the plaintiffs cannot have it
13 both ways. Either they are saying this must mean, you
14 know, that the cartoon must relate to McDonald's food,
15 because it is in the pamphlet about McDonald's, in which
16 case therefore every line must relate to McDonald's by that
17 argument, which is a bit absurd. So if there is anything
18 that is defamatory or a bad thing that is mentioned in the
19 pamphlet that McDonald's have not complained about, then we
20 should be able to pray it in aid that well, if McDonald's
21 view is held that if it is in the pamphlet it must be an
22 attack on McDonald's, so ----
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I see nothing odd about that. I mean, it
25 seems to me at the moment that everything in this pamphlet
26 does not relate to McDonald's. It may relate to Burger
27 King and Kentucky Fried Chicken or multi-nationals
28 generally as well, if one looks at any specific allegation,
29 but it all relates to McDonald's, and therefore if there is
30 a defamatory charge in the section of the leaflet which
31 McDonald's have not pleaded but which you say is there and
32 which you have justified on the evidence, then you owe it
33 to yourself to point it out. Do not bother to point out
34 any defamatory meanings which you have not justified
35 because that will be counter productive.
36
37 MR. MORRIS: Obviously we have not tried to justify any
38 meanings that were not identified by the plaintiffs as
39 defamatory generally. A lot of them are common sense or
40 just are public knowledge. But I will identify them. And
41 whether we can justify them is another question.
42
43 In the "fifty acres every minute" box, it talks about the
44 effects of deforestation and the relationship between
45 deforestation and hunger, and it talks about rainforest,
46 one billion people depending on water flowing from these
47 forests.
48
49 If I can just say, on the terms of meaning, it is clear
50 that the word rainforest is used in this pamphlet to
51 describe all tropical forests. It is inconceivable that
52 one billion people are depending on water from only one
53 small section of tropical forests.
54
55 It then talks about hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan. Ethiopia
56 is a reference to the band aid earlier on, we presume, that
57 was trying to raise food for people that were starving in
58 Ethiopia. Then it talks about, in the next sentence: In
59 Amazonia, torrential rain sweeps down the treeless valleys,
60 eroding the land and washing away the soil. So soil
