Day 158 - 19 Jul 95 - Page 48


     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:  But that is all.  It does not, as a matter of law
     2        or of logic, disqualify us from saying: "Well, at this
     3        stage in the case we are going to take a point in relation
     4        to this new proposed pleading which, admittedly, we could
     5        have taken in relation to an old pleading about a different
     6        part of the world, but did not take."  That is bad luck on
     7        us; it is our fault, and we have to live with the
     8        consequences, and we have done so; and we have made our
     9        discovery and we are calling evidence in relation to
    10        Costa Rica and Guatemala.  That does not mean to say that
    11        we have to go through the same process just because we
    12        missed the point on a previous occasion.  I make it now --
    13        your Lordship may say: "Well, you cannot be inconsistent",
    14        or something, I do not know -- but I make it now in the
    15        belief that it is a valid objection to this pleading at
    16        this stage of the case.
    17
    18        My Lord, I pass from that to the other ground of objection
    19        which is that, in truth, once this proposed pleading has
    20        been dismantled and exposed for what it truly is, the
    21        Defendants do not have any reasonable ground to suppose
    22        that evidence is or may be forthcoming to support what is
    23        here pleaded.
    24
    25        If I may summarise it, our belief is that the existing
    26        material -- and I do not necessarily mean by that just
    27        evidence, because grounds for belief can and often do go
    28        beyond strict admissible evidence -- what all that material
    29        known to the Defendants provides a reasonable ground for
    30        believing is this, we submit, that McDonald's have never
    31        used any rain forest or ex-rainforest beef from Brazil,
    32        whether for use in Brazil itself or anywhere else in the
    33        world.
    34
    35        My Lord, I say that, I hope with conviction, because of the
    36        material which is available to demonstrate that it is
    37        likely to be right.   My Lord, I put on one side for the
    38        present purposes Mr. Shane and Mr. Monbiot who, I regret to
    39        say (it is no fault of theirs), speak in very broad
    40        generalities without any specificity as to dates and areas
    41        and sources of supply.  In particular, of course, they do
    42        not, because they cannot, provide any evidence against
    43        McDonald's.  So I put them on one side.
    44
    45        Material which is available is the evidence of Mr. Walker
    46        about his trip to Brazil and the basis on which the
    47        Brazilian balance sheet beef was taken in 1983, 80 tonnes
    48        on that one occasion; the evidence of Dr. Gomez Gonzales
    49        about where the domestic sources of supply are from
    50        McDonald's in Brazil; the Vesty letter and the surrounding 
    51        correspondence; and the Braslo map. 
    52 
    53        When one summarises that material -- and I have done it by
    54        putting it all on a copy of some pages from The Times
    55        Atlas -- one sees this, in my respectful submission, that
    56        there is no possibility (and I put it as strongly as that)
    57        that any of the beef which is habitually used by McDonald's
    58        in Brazil for Brazilian purposes since 1979 has ever come
    59        from any land which was ever rain forest within living
    60        memory.

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