Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 58


     
     1        rainforest, you know what you are doing.  That being so,
     2        what I might call accidental or incidental or unintended
     3        bits and pieces of rainforests clearance which might have
     4        taken place as a consequence of McDonald's commercial
     5        activities would not fit the bill, would not get past the
     6        door -- which is why I say that scale is so important,
     7        because if it were happening on a vast scale in order to
     8        suit McDonald's needs, then surely they would know about
     9        it.
    10
    11        If I may answer your Lordship's original question directly,
    12        if the facts were -- and I find it difficult not to add
    13        "but they are not", but anyhow I will not do that -- if
    14        the facts were that people were destroying large areas of
    15        rainforest in Central and South America either at
    16        McDonald's bidding or with McDonald's knowledge in order to
    17        supply McDonald's needs for beef or paper, then I would
    18        certainly say that the sting of the libel has been proved
    19        to be true.
    20
    21   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  If one imagined a small country where
    22        there is not much grazing but McDonald's want to open a
    23        large number of restaurants and get all their patties from
    24        beef from cattle which had been grown there, and the
    25        inevitable result is that people have to destroy forest to
    26        provide the grazing, then it really would not matter a fig
    27        that they had not used Agent Orange sprayed from aeroplanes
    28        flown by their own employees.
    29
    30   MR. RAMPTON:  I quite agree -- because, inevitably, they would
    31        know -----
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But you say it would have to be on something
    34        approaching as direct as that.
    35
    36   MR. RAMPTON:  If Jose Fernandez goes off into the rainforest and
    37        clears a patch and then sends a few cows back to Alajuela,
    38        or whatever it is, without McDonald's knowledge, one could
    39        hardly say it was a justification; but if vast swathes of
    40        Costa Rican rainforest in the north were being cleared for
    41        cattle for whichever the Company is now, for shipping into
    42        Baranca or Alajuela to make patties, why then, it would be
    43        a different case, because McDonald's would surely know
    44        about that; and, whatever they said, it would not be
    45        believed, if that was happening.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Following on, I think, along that line of
    48        thought, if there were an indirect responsibility by some
    49        hamburger connection which does not justify the defamatory
    50        meanings, can that be used in mitigation of damages, or do 
    51        you say, well, really it would be so trivial by comparison, 
    52        it would not affect it, whatever the theory might be? 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:  Can I leap ahead a bit, because that is actually,
    55        if I may respectfully say so, quite a difficult question.
    56        In an ordinary case, if evidence of bona fide offered in
    57        defence of an arguable sting of the words complained of and
    58        it fell short of a justification, perhaps, because the
    59        scale was too small or the evidence was not as extensive as
    60        the defendant had liked, then the answer to your Lordship's

Prev Next Index