Day 276 - 09 Jul 96 - Page 35
1 served in the summer, during the summer vacation in 1994,
2 those were all documents which I had asked for at several
3 pretrial hearings and which the Plaintiffs claimed were not
4 available or were not relevant, or something.
5
6 All the press releases and leaflets which appear in
7 this bundle were all given to us by journalists in the case
8 of the press releases, and members of the public or
9 supporters in the case of the leaflets. But, actually,
10 that probably does not matter seeing as McDonald's are
11 admitting they have distributed it anyway. The same
12 allegations get repeated in the letters that appear in tab
13 6 and tab 7. Obviously, I just make all the same points in
14 relation to them. So, I will not go through them all.
15
16 In tab 7, Mr. Carson is a freelance journalist. The
17 letter that appears in tab 9 to George Galloway MP was
18 passed on to us from Mr. Galloway. And on page 2 of that
19 letter, which is dated 3rd July 1995, McDonald's say, "We
20 are faced with the defendants' refusal to cease
21 publication. We have no alternative but to demonstrate
22 publicly that the contents of the leaflet are untrue and
23 seek an injunction restraining them from publishing the
24 allegations. Further, it has never been our intention to
25 seek damages or recover costs from the defendants."
26
27 Obviously, as we know, that is not true, and that
28 claim by McDonald's has been repeated in a number of places
29 in the newspaper and in other letters that have been sent
30 out from McDonald's head office. It is clear to me that
31 the only purpose of it is to try and dissuade or deter
32 support from us by making McDonald's sound as though they
33 are being really reasonable, along the same lines as how
34 they wrote to us so many times before they were reluctantly
35 forced to take any action, and both of the things are
36 completely untrue. But it does not seem to stop them
37 saying them.
38
39 The same statement is made on the second page of the
40 letter in tab 10 to Ken Livingston MP, dated 6th February
41 1996. Obviously, that is much more recent. Right at the
42 bottom of the page, "It has never been our intention to
43 seek damages or recover costs from the defendants."
44
45 Then on the following page - sorry, not on the
46 following page, the next letter, which is still in tab 10,
47 is a letter dated 7th March 1996 to Mr. Ken Livingston MP.
48 This was given to us by Mr. Livingston, and in the fourth
49 paragraph Mike Love, who wrote the letter, said he has
50 enclosed a copy of our background briefing note relating to
51 the trial, and so on. And behind that is the copy of the
52 libel action background briefing which was given to
53 Mr. Livingston, which is dated 3rd of 1995 and which
54 repeats the lie about first having written to the group in
55 December 1984 about the leaflet that they are suing over
56 and having written several subsequent letters. Obviously,
57 by this time, the Plaintiffs were fully aware that this was
58 completely untrue, because they had received our pleadings
59 and had been forced to admit that there was, in fact, only
60 one letter about a different leaflet.
