Day 024 - 15 Sep 94 - Page 38
1 A. I believe it was, yes.
2
3 Q. The letter that is written on 24th April was written at
4 the conclusion of your investigation?
5 A. And I apologise, let me look again, please.
6
7 Q. Exhibit 7.
8 A. Yes. No, this, Exhibit 7, was not the first
9 communication that we had.
10
11 Q. If we turn to tab 34, page 165, there should be a mailgram
12 there. Is that the page you have?
13 A. Yes, page 165 is the April 10, 1987 mailgram that
14 I caused to be sent to Mr. Rensi at McDonald's.
15
16 Q. It says: "Texas Attorney General, Jim Mattox, has asked
17 that I contact you to arrange a meeting in our Dallas
18 offices regarding the current McDonald's 'Good Food'
19 advertising campaign.
20
21 We have reason to believe that the campaign may be in
22 violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
23
24 Please contact me upon receipt of this mailgram to confirm
25 your availability on Monday, 20th April.
26
27 You may have an attorney present, if you so desire.
28 Details of material to be produced at that meeting will be
29 forthcoming".
30
31 This mailgram that you sent, would this have been around
32 the time that you began to start investigating them?
33 A. It would have been relatively soon after I had reached
34 an initial conclusion that the campaign might be in
35 violation of our Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
36
37 At the time, in 1987, my office was not very
38 technologically advanced and it was extremely poorly
39 staffed in terms of numbers of people who were available
40 as support staff. It was my practice at that time, rather
41 than trying to get a letter out by overnight mail, and
42 because we did not have at that time a fax machine, when
43 I needed to get a notice out in a quick manner to a
44 company but to make sure that it got it expeditiously, to
45 use the mailgram service when I could dictate the content
46 of a letter with the knowledge that it would be delivered
47 immediately the next morning. That is what this reflects.
48
49 Q. What would have been the purpose of a meeting that was
50 suggested with McDonald's at this point?
51 A. As distinguished from the purpose of the meetings that
52 we requested that all the companies come to in the
53 preceding year, by this point we had examined the
54 advertising and had reached a fairly solid preliminary
55 conclusion that there was a problem. The purpose of the
56 meeting, therefore, would be not to talk about whether or
57 not we thought there was a problem, but to talk about how
58 McDonald's could resolve the problem. Any resolution
59 would have had to have concluded a commitment by
60 McDonald's to stop the advertising at issue.
