Day 163 - 25 Sep 95 - Page 05
1 MR. MORRIS: I was going to refer to them, to point out to the
2 court how they had circulated a document which they could
3 not distinguish from the London Greenpeace text complained
4 of, and that they would continue to circulate that
5 document. The actual argument about the headings I was
6 going to come to after that. If you note -----
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: My point is this: Let us suppose you are
9 right in your summary at the moment -- we might have to
10 look at the evidence to see whether you are -- suppose that
11 what I am putting to you is, suppose Mr. Beavers and
12 Mr. Preston had said: "Yes, a document which McDonald's
13 published says the same thing or much the same thing as
14 those three lines of text", that is only part of the
15 leaflet. That is what I am putting to you.
16
17 MR. MORRIS: That is the part of the leaflet which we are saying
18 cannot be defamatory or their claim cannot win on that.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Then go back to what I said a moment ago: You
21 do not just look at a part of leaflet; you look at the
22 whole of it. You look at the Arches, you look at the
23 headline, you look at the text, you look at the cartoon and
24 then decide what they mean all together.
25
26 MR. MORRIS: I was going to come to the Charleston case after
27 explaining how we feel, that the Plaintiffs already
28 conceded the distribution of the equivalent material. Then
29 the argument purely remains a matter of meaning and the
30 headlines which then we go through Charleston. If you
31 note, the last point in the application, point 7, is an
32 alternative application that the links between diet and
33 ill-health have been established in terms of they are not
34 an issue in the case because of the Plaintiffs' own
35 distribution, then the argument merely becomes a legal one
36 over interpretation of Charleston. But there should not be
37 a need to call further evidence and plough through dozens
38 of days of transcripts.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just think about this situation and tell me
41 if I am wrong in this analysis: You could only succeed on
42 this application if it were quite clear that the Plaintiffs
43 could not possibly succeed on this part of the case, that
44 is, that they could not show a defamatory meaning of the
45 leaflet in relation to nutrition which you could not
46 justify; put another way, that any defamatory meaning which
47 this leaflet has was patently justified on the evidence so
48 far.
49
50 The first stage is to know what the meaning of the leaflet
51 is; not what two or three lines mean, what the whole
52 leaflet means. So you have to start, do you not, by
53 telling me what you say the meaning of the leaflet is and
54 arguing what the meaning of the leaflet is. Then we can
55 see whether, as you contend, Mr. Beavers and Mr. Preston
56 have admitted that that meaning is true. Is that a fair
57 analysis?
58
59 MR. MORRIS: That is one course to go down, to have an argument
60 over the meaning and a ruling on the meaning at this stage
