Day 303 - 19 Nov 96 - Page 29
1 ability to go through a hundred and odd days of transcript
2 in order to pick out the points.
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I wish it only was a hundred and odd days.
5
6 MR. MORRIS: Just for the employment ones, yes, we cannot
7 compete with that, so I just wanted to ask you to----
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is helpful for you to point out that which
10 you think is important among that which you said you had
11 time to check through, but I obviously do not restrict
12 myself to it.
13
14 MR. MORRIS: Yes. For example, a good example is Denise Pearce,
15 I looked at last night at whenever it was, midnight.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There is no need to ----
18
19 MR. MORRIS: I wanted to say as an example, because, you know,
20 what I remember from her evidence, I had forgotten just how
21 effectively, we would submit, her evidence had been
22 rendered, what we submit, would be worthless, because of
23 the cross-examination. I am not saying that is, you know,
24 a great credit to us. All I am saying is that when
25 Mr. Rampton slapped his document down with all the
26 references, he no doubt would have put some references from
27 Denise Pearce, but luckily I had a chance to analyse the
28 testimony and it turned out, you know, to be as I put it
29 this morning, that it all fell apart as she was in the
30 witness box.
31
32 And I think that, you know, because we cannot do that job
33 with other witnesses, I would just hope that you would
34 check your notes carefully that you made for all the
35 witnesses that Mr. Rampton wants to draw your attention to
36 and be very careful about the sway that Mr. Rampton is
37 going to put on the effect of their evidence, and the
38 interpretation. At the end of the day, it may make little
39 difference in this part of the case because the
40 documentation is pretty much clear as day anyway.
41
42 Just carrying on, Harriet Lamb - I am only dealing with a
43 very few and very sketchy as a kind of brief skate over the
44 live evidence - Harriet Lamb, a researcher who gathered
45 information by working at McDonald's in Kentish Town in
46 1987, told how she was researching for a pamphlet working
47 for Big Mac about the reality of working conditions at
48 McDonald's, which McDonald's of course subsequently sued
49 and pulped, forced to be pulped. The pamphlet publishers
50 were sued by the Company, apologised in open court due to
51 lack of funds, as she told the court, and had to pulp the
52 booklet and the organisation closed down.
53
54 I am sure McDonald's were very pleased with themselves.
55 But she said she stood by the contents of the work despite
56 the so-called apology. She wrote an article for the
57 Guardian Newspaper, which was also sued, and then the
58 Guardian apologised, she said because they could only
59 afford to fight one libel case at a time. She stood by
60 everything that she had said and the research that she had
