Day 025 - 16 Sep 94 - Page 41
1
2 Q. Is the position this, that if the campaign came to the end
3 (to which it was always intended that it should come) some
4 time during 1987, for the larger part, you were not
5 concerned thereafter to take any kind of enforcement
6 proceedings?
7 A. My position has nothing to do with the intentional
8 date of the termination, so I could not answer it that
9 way. I could tell you our goal in contacting McDonald's
10 was to ensure that the advertising would not be continued
11 and to receive their assurances as to that. When we did
12 determine that, our requirements had been met.
13
14 Q. Yes. Are you familiar with the Latin phrase which is
15 sometimes used in legal and logical circles in this
16 country, post hoc propter hoc?
17 A. Yes, I am.
18
19 Q. It describes a fallacy of reasoning, does it not?
20 A. I do not know that. I am not a logic scholar. I do
21 know that it may describe a conclusion that is an
22 inference that is incorrect; it may also describe a
23 conclusion that is absolutely correct.
24
25 Q. What I am putting to you is this: It would not be right
26 to infer, to borrow your word, from the fact that the
27 McDonald's advertising campaign came, a large part of it,
28 by no means entirely, to an end during the first half of
29 1987, it would not be correct to infer from that that your
30 intervention had anything to do with that event.
31 A. From those facts of themselves without any of the
32 other facts that are before the court?
33
34 Q. We will come to that but so far would you agree with me?
35 A. If the only fact is that something stopped after it
36 was demanded that it be stopped, I think a reasonable
37 inference was that it might have been stopped due to the
38 demand. It is an equally reasonable inference that it
39 might not have been stopped due to the demand but for
40 other causes.
41
42 Q. What I want to know is this: Do you assert that your
43 intervention had any part to play in McDonald's decision
44 not to extend the campaign beyond that part of 1987?
45 A. Yes.
46
47 Q. Why do you make that assertion?
48 A. Based on the totality of facts as opposed to the
49 limited facts you were just reciting. It is my belief
50 based on -- I could not tell you where I have seen it --
51 some things, some of the materials, relating to McDonald's
52 in that campaign, that this was a year-long campaign, that
53 provides support for the inferential proof that when
54 McDonald's assured us that no further advertisements were
55 forthcoming in the third and fourth quarters of 1987, that
56 that year-long campaign had been truncated early.
57
58 I also read into Mr. Rosberg's statement, in his letter in
59 response to, I believe it was, the April 24th 1987 letter
60 -- it may have been in response to a subsequent letter --
