Day 101 - 10 Mar 95 - Page 11
1 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can I just say something, because on many
2 occasions you or Mr. Morris have said: "But you do not
3 know", particularly, I think, you have said it. It must
4 always be, unless McDonald's are going to check every bit
5 of chicken which comes into the Sun Valley processing plant
6 and then comes out to a restaurant, something they do not
7 know. Unless Mr. Pattison watches every broiler caught,
8 there will always be something he does not know and so on
9 with every possible witness.
10
11 What I have to look at is whether, in an imperfect world,
12 what are the standards of the controls? You have asked
13 questions about that, and that is really what I have to
14 direct myself at, unless you are going to say, argue to me
15 at the end of the day, that there must be a McDonald's
16 person checking every item of food which goes into every
17 processing plant and then into every restaurant.
18
19 MS. STEEL: I think the difficulty is that when a witness
20 says: "Oh, yes, everything is fine", we feel that if we do
21 not challenge that by actually explicitly stating: "Well,
22 you cannot possibly know that", then that will just be
23 accepted.
24
25 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No. At the end of this evidence, when it
26 comes to you addressing me, we are going to have a
27 multitude of sources of evidence. The case will have to be
28 decided, wherever issues of facts arise, on what is more
29 likely than not on such evidence as is available.
30
31 MS. STEEL: Right, but I do not know, if we had not put
32 it -----
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just bear that in mind. That is all.
35
36 MS. STEEL: Yes. If we had not put it to the witness, though,
37 will it not be open to Mr. Rampton at the end to say: "You
38 did not put that to the witness".
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think he would dream of doing that.
41
42 MR. RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I would not dream of doing that. I
43 have laid out, I hope as fully as possible with some little
44 bits to come, McDonald's systems of supervision safeguards
45 to prevent food poisoning, that is to say, to reduce the
46 risk of food poisoning in their customers to a minimum.
47 Aside from the two incidents which are known about --
48 three, if you count the typhoid one -- your Lordship will
49 say at the end of the day whether or not the risk of a
50 customer being poisoned by a meal eaten at McDonald's is or
51 is not significant.
52
53 That is, with the greatest respect, what the Defendants
54 should be concentrating on. They should identify the
55 stages in the system which they say are fallible or could
56 be better, and they should put it to this witness which is
57 why this witness is here.
58
59 MS. STEEL: The five degrees Centigrade temperature that they
60 work to, is that something that you have asked them to work
