Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 32
1 about malice and lies -- because these are matters of
2 public interest, they should be protected from - what is
3 the word - transparently thin allegations of malice or
4 lying, the test should be higher because it is different if
5 these were matters that were just some private feud with
6 McDonald's or something like that, but these are matters of
7 public interest that need to be aired and the public must
8 be protected.
9
10 Secondly, and this really goes actually to a wider issue as
11 well, which is reputation, is that no one concludes from
12 the fact sheet that what the distributors are saying is
13 McDonald's is terrible, go to their competitors, because
14 their competitors are all criticised in identical terms,
15 although McDonald's is the focus of the fact sheet. So it
16 is not motivated by an intent to damage the business in
17 relation to the competitors of McDonald's.
18
19 If I can make another point I have to make, that the
20 plaintiffs have not shown and they cannot show, apart from
21 the fact they cannot show that we ever distributed the fact
22 sheet or were responsible for it, even if they could, that
23 we would have done it for personal gain, monetary gain or
24 any other reason.
25
26 If we contrast this with McDonald's aim of issuing their
27 vicious press release and their much more toned down
28 leaflet, although the leaflet was much more widely spread,
29 their motive was to defend -- well, the timing of it
30 suggests their motive was to attack myself and Helen and
31 critics in general in the eyes of the public, to discredit
32 them in the eyes of the public.
33
34 And McDonald's have tried to plead... Sorry, and the point
35 about that is what are they defending anyway. They are
36 defending their right to make profits; therefore it is not
37 the same as a human being defending their reputation about
38 what people think of them. We are talking about a
39 corporation, in this case it was McDonald's UK, a UK
40 company, which already has all the publicity and all the
41 ability to put over its point of view, trying to justify
42 its right to continue making profits in the way that it has
43 always done in this country. And that cannot be the same
44 as human beings trying to protect their reputation, with
45 feelings, emotions, because McDonald's reputation, in any
46 event, is something that is manufactured through their
47 advertising.
48
49 But they have argued now privileged self-defence. And we
50 are going to try and do a proper legal submission on this
51 later, but I wanted to flag this up now because it is part
52 of the whole context here.
53
54 Now, I can see some merit in an argument of privileged
55 self-defence if somebody is attacked in the street and
56 insulted, that they would resist and insult back and argue
57 privileged self-defence or justified self-defence, but we
58 are not talking about an emotional reaction by McDonald's
59 Corporation to criticisms, as they have argued. You know,
60 something where they can justify self-defence because they
