Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 37
1 Plaintiffs to narrow down their investigation.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But have you made any attempt to get this
4 document?
5
6 MR. MORRIS: Not so far. But if the Plaintiffs have it in their
7 possession, as it is a matter in issue, then it should be
8 disclosed.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is there anything you want to say at that
11 about that?
12
13 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. There is, in my respectful submission, a
14 limit to the extent to which the Defendants think by
15 producing a press cutting or, I do not know, maybe a
16 passage from a booklet from 40 years ago or something, that
17 they are entitled to trawl through categories of documents
18 which have no real bearing on the case. I say those words
19 slowly and carefully. I ask this question: How would it
20 help your Lordship to decide the issues in this case to
21 know whether or not it be the fact that a Consumer
22 Protection Association in Germany had uttered certain
23 opinions about the use of ronald mcdonald in
24 kindergartens. It is quite a different matter, your
25 Lordship may think, whether your Lordship thinks it
26 important or not, the question whether or not the use of
27 ronald mcdonald in kindergartens is a good idea or not,
28 whether it matters. That is a matter upon which your
29 Lordship can make up your own mind.
30
31 You are not, in our respectful submission, going to be
32 helped in the very slightest by what the German Consumer
33 Children's Protection Association thought about it one way
34 or the other, assuming that they did. A complaint or
35 allegation repeated through the mouth of a piece of paper
36 in this court really takes the matter nowhere at all.
37
38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Where did it come from?
39
40 MR. RAMPTON: I have no idea.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: I think it was an extract from a book by our
43 witness Siegfried Pater.
44
45 MR. JUSTICE BELL: How does help me reach any conclusion in this
46 case?
47
48 MR. MORRIS: For a start, it is on 21st March 1989, not 40 years
49 ago.
50
51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, but why should I pay in any way to what
52 that association thinks? I might agree with them; I might
53 feel more strongly than they do; I might think it does not
54 matter. How does what the association thinks help?
55
56 MR. MORRIS: I think it would have the same status as if the
57 Advertising Standards Authority rules that a McDonald's
58 advert is misleading or deceptive, then it may not be
59 conclusive in allegations of deceptiveness against the
60 Plaintiff, but it would certainly help you to form an
