Day 163 - 25 Sep 95 - Page 40
1 articles consisting, largely speaking, of allegations.
2 They are at least third-hand hearsay, even when it is said
3 in a newspaper article or, I would say, rather, a computer
4 extract from a newspaper article, that McDonald's were
5 fined for this, that or the other mouse dropping, or
6 whatever it may be. One has absolutely no reason to
7 suppose that that is likely to be right.
8 One can see that when one looks further on in the pleading
9 at the child employment violation allegations.
10
11 One starts from the position that the newspaper may have
12 misreported what the inspectors found. Then one goes
13 beyond that and one has to ask the question: Was what the
14 inspectors said they found correct or not?
15
16 McDonald's have to make the decision: Shall we dispute the
17 inspectors' findings if, indeed, the inspectors made such a
18 finding? They have to do it for all these nine or 10
19 allegations, such as they are.
20
21 When they have made that decision, and Mr. Morris says
22 glibly: "Oh, well, McDonald's could simply admit them",
23 why on earth should they? We have no reason to suppose
24 that any of them is a true bill. We do not have the same
25 touching faith in the utterances of newspapers and public
26 officials that Mr. Morris seems to have. We treat all such
27 things with proper suspicion. If these amendments were
28 allowed, we would have to investigate every single one of
29 them and make a decision how we were going to deal with
30 them. If we decided they must be contested, then we have
31 to make discovery and we have to find witnesses to be
32 brought either in person or on paper to this country,
33 witnesses, moreover, whose memory may not extend back as
34 far as seven or eight years.
35
36 If that were the case, then the Defendants have an
37 allegation they can make, if we cannot find the documents
38 or the people, they have an allegation produced out of a
39 hat at almost the last moment in the case, an allegation
40 that they can make that we cannot contest.
41
42 My Lord, it is simply, we submit, not right that so
43 relatively insignificant a group of allegations should be
44 allowed into this case at this late stage. Your Lordship
45 does have a discretion, as I say, to exclude them on
46 grounds of fairness and justice and public interest. That
47 is what we invite your Lordship to do, given this
48 additional problem in many of these cases, not all, but
49 many of them, we were not even told whether the restaurant
50 concerned was a McOpco restaurant, a Corporation owned
51 restaurant, or a franchisee.
52
53 In the latter case, one could well imagine if one were told
54 that, given the relative unimportance of these allegations
55 -- near irrelevance, I would say -- one might well say if
56 it is a franchised restaurant: "Well, go hang it; that is
57 nothing to do with us. Just for this once we would ignore
58 it", but we are not even told that in the majority of these
59 cases.
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