Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 08
1 me to be non-defamatory and innocuous. It may be that you
2 could allege there are other defamatory meanings apart from
3 those which you have justified. So I am very keen to hear
4 what you have to say about that so that I can compare it
5 with what McDonald's have pleaded as the defamatory
6 meaning.
7
8 It is something which I put in the note I gave you which
9 was designed to try and help you something over a year ago
10 now. I said that was one of the things I particularly
11 wanted to hear from you on.
12
13 MR. MORRIS: Right.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have gone on far too long about it. It is
16 a genuine attempt to try and help you. I appreciate you
17 may want to think about it, but I think you can still get
18 on with your submissions, and particularly your submissions
19 on what the various facts you say are important and which
20 you have proved in relation to each section of the
21 leaflet.
22
23 MR. MORRIS: Okay. What I am going to deal with today, and we
24 are not really prepared, is to start off with the
25 rainforests section of the case. And we have not had any
26 advice about meaning or facts and comment or, indeed, what
27 is defamatory and what is not defamatory. And it seems to
28 us to be, whether it is the law of the land or not, bizarre
29 to have what I yesterday called fancy footwork, to have to
30 think about well, if we say this is the meaning, then we
31 cannot get this evidence in or evidence would be allowed in
32 but it might not be strong enough because of this reason.
33
34 So I am not going to deal with what is fact and comment.
35 And this applies to all the meanings and all the sections
36 at this stage. Because I still, in my own mind, do not
37 know the strict legal definition of those words, if they
38 are terms of art. But the most important thing to us is
39 the sting of the allegation, is McDonald's responsible and
40 in what way is McDonald's responsible for the destruction
41 of tropical forests by whatever means and methods that
42 destruction is carried out.
43
44 Can I say now that I am going to go through this, the
45 meanings and some of the core evidence on this subject
46 today and I have not had time to get the transcript
47 references, the specific references.
48
49 MR JUSTICE BELL: Well, if you can give me references, do; if
50 you cannot, just try and refer me generally to the nature
51 of the evidence, because although a lot of it I may have
52 made a note of already, it saves me time if you can give me
53 the references. If you cannot, I will just hunt it out
54 myself.
55
56 MR. MORRIS: Right. Well, maybe if there is anything in
57 particular which surprises you or you have forgotten about
58 or something, you can make a note.
59
60 MR JUSTICE BELL: I will put down a marker and you can try and
