Day 177 - 26 Oct 95 - Page 21
1
2 "72. Goods. A statement that the books sold by
3 a bookseller are immoral, or that the meat sold
4 by a butcher is diseased, rotten or tubercular,
5 or that the house erected by a builder is
6 jerry-built, defamatory of them."
7
8 My Lord, perhaps that fuels what I was saying a moment
9 ago. If the gravity of the defect is sufficiently great,
10 then it may be that the ordinary reader will say: "This man
11 is, at the very least, incompetent or negligent."
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: There is an element of culpability. Can one
14 say that is the test?
15
16 MR. RAMPTON: If inefficiency or incompetence is culpability,
17 then yes, I agree. Can I say now that I -----
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is an invention of mine. It is a word
20 which was used in Gillett -- culpable responsibility, as it
21 were.
22
23 MR. RAMPTON: The way I would grade defamations of tradesmen is
24 something like this, from the bottom to the top, starting
25 with incompetence or inefficiency -- and of course these
26 are not black and white, they overlap to some extent --
27 negligence: perhaps a persistent neglect of quality or
28 safety; incompetence or inefficiency might be lack of skill
29 or diligence; then recklessness, not really caring in the
30 least for the customers' interests, probably in pursuit of
31 what the Defendants would call a fast buck; and then there
32 is deliberate malpractice stopping short of what one might
33 call public dishonesty, but deliberate malpractice such as
34 adulteration of bread to make it go further or to reduce
35 the cost of manufacturing it; and finally, of course, there
36 is fraud and dishonesty, consciously hiding the poor or
37 dangerous quality of the goods and perhaps, also, though
38 not necessarily, telling positive falsehoods about the
39 quality of the goods. That is at the top of the scale and
40 that, as we shall submit, is what this part of the leaflet,
41 the nutrition part, accuses McDonald's of doing: hiding
42 the truth and telling lies about the quality of their
43 products.
44
45 My Lord, can I go on with paragraph 72.
46
47 "It is a reflection on a shipowner in the way of
48 his business to state that a ship which he owns
49 and has advertised for a voyage is unseaworthy
50 and likely to go to the bottom. In Hatchard v.
51 Mege, a statement that a certain wine sold by
52 the plaintiff 'cannot be the wine it is
53 represented to be' was held to be capable of
54 being interpreted as a charge of personal
55 dishonesty on the part of the vendor, though it
56 was also an attack on the plaintiff's trade
57 mark. And where the defendants stated that a
58 wine which the plaintiff made and advertised as
59 'really genuine nutritive meat wine' contained
60 such a ridiculous small quantity of beef extract
