Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 57
1 back, and one can still validly ask the question ---
2
3 MR. RAMPTON: Oh, yes.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- without any direct effect. From a chain
6 of causation which is indirect to a degree, one can still
7 step back and validly ask the question: are McDonald's
8 responsible for those trees coming down?
9
10 MR. RAMPTON: One can ask the question, but it only provides an
11 affirmative answer to the question: is it a justification?
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
14
15 MR. RAMPTON: If the responsibility is of a culpable kind; and
16 one of the elements in answering that question, that second
17 question, is the responsibility of a kind which is
18 culpable, one of the elements in answering that question is
19 the question of scale. That is an inescapable feature of
20 this part of the leaflet, that the destruction of the
21 rainforest for which McDonald's are alleged to be
22 responsible is on a vast scale. I have used the word
23 "vast", because that is the word that is in the
24 leaflet: "50 acres every minute", "helping the McDonald's
25 empire to wreck the planet", "800 square miles of
26 rainforest just to make paper every year".
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If the general sting in B could be justified
29 by evidence of indirect responsibility for the destruction
30 of rainforest, would the specific sting of direct
31 destruction in C remain unjustified? Is that freestanding
32 on its own? I mean, is there room -- let us forget the
33 evidence for the moment, just so I can pose the question.
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. I am trying as hard as I can to forget the
36 evidence for the moment.
37
38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If the situation is this, that McDonald's are
39 indirectly responsible for destruction of the rainforest
40 because, although they do not chop down trees or spray
41 Agent Orange on it themselves, or ask people, or tell
42 people, instruct people to go out and do it, as night
43 follows the day, the result of what they are doing is
44 destruction of significant areas of rainforest. Then, in
45 those circumstances, would you be able to say: yes, but to
46 say that they have used lethal poison to destroy vast areas
47 of rainforest themselves to create is not justified?
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: No. It would not add very much. It would not be
50 justified. But whether it made any difference to the
51 ultimate result is doubtful. I would, however, say this:
52 perhaps the significance -- apart from the fact that it
53 said quite a lot about the factual integrity of this
54 leaflet, that it is not true -- the significance, perhaps,
55 in the context of what your Lordship has been putting to me
56 of the allegation of active destruction, using lethal
57 poisons, is that there is no escape on meaning, whichever
58 one route takes, direct or indirect, of -- what shall
59 I say -- knowledge and intention. It is quite obvious that
60 if you use lethal poisons actively to destroy vast areas of
