Day 058 - 30 Nov 94 - Page 36


     
     1        have been in relation to the amount of forest it took to
     2        provide McDonald's with packaging.
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I will just wait and see what, if any,
     5        evidence you call in relation to it.  As I have tried to
     6        say before, my understanding when looking at the meaning of
     7        a statement -- we are talking of written statements here
     8        which is alleged to be libelous -- is it does not matter
     9        what the author actually meant it to mean, it is what the
    10        ordinary reader would understand it to mean, because the
    11        ordinary reader does not have the advantage of the thought
    12        processes of the author.
    13
    14        You may be right, as a matter of interesting explanation,
    15        if that be so the topic arose -- I do not want to go back
    16        into it -- when we were talking about what "link" might
    17        mean.  There we are.  Can you just remind me so can I make
    18        a mental note of it now?  The 150 tonnes of pulpwood and
    19        180 tonnes of sawmill residue which appear at the bottom of
    20        page 4 of Mr. Mallinson's statement which was served a few
    21        days ago and which became his evidence-in-chief, that came
    22        from the document I looked at the day before yesterday, did
    23        it, the Iggesund document?
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes, my Lord.
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  What is the status of that document at the
    28        moment?
    29
    30   MR. RAMPTON:  I do not know what the status of that document is.
    31          My Lord, I do not really mind whether one uses the
    32        figures provided by Iggesund to Mr. Mallinson -- if I need
    33        to, I can could impress that, I suppose, with a Civil
    34        Evidence Act statement -- or whether one uses the figures
    35        provided by Mr. Kouchoukos on the basis of what Perseco --
    36        sorry, not Perseco, the basis of what his supplies had told
    37        him.
    38
    39        The fact is either way one arrives for the United States at
    40        a total figure of cut down trees or, rather, I should say,
    41        reconstituted trees, because that is in fact what they are,
    42        there is only a proportion of each tree, and if you work
    43        backwards from Mr. Kouchoukos's figures you get a total
    44        acreage or square area of reconstituted trees for the
    45        United States of 9.4 square miles and for Europe, I think,
    46        something in the ordinary of 1.4.
    47
    48        On those figures, if what the leaflet means is, where it
    49        says, "The truth is it takes 800 square miles of forest
    50        just to keep them supplied with paper for one year", if 
    51        that means that 800 square miles of forest throughout the 
    52        world have to be cut down every year just to supply 
    53        McDonald's with paper for one year, why, then the sort of
    54        calculations which Mr. Mallinson has been prompted to do in
    55        relation to the south of Scotland and Mr. Thompson have
    56        absolutely no significance whatsoever.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The short answer to all this is that it is
    59        not in civil litigation for a judge to say what evidence he
    60        would or would not -- he can say what evidence he does not

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