Day 200 - 12 Dec 95 - Page 15
1 because to say that the food has these intrinsic or
2 inherent qualities is to say that merely to eat it carries
3 these risks beyond the occasional meal.
4
5 My Lord, can I express it in a different way? Perhaps this
6 illustrates what I am saying more clearly. Your Lordship
7 did not find (and we respectively say rightly) that the
8 meaning was "the food may impair your health if you eat too
9 much of it and do not otherwise balance your diet". If it
10 had said that, one might think it was barely defamatory at
11 all because you could say that of virtually any substance
12 on earth, including water. But here, my Lord, what your
13 Lordship has found to be the meaning focuses not upon the
14 quantity or its relation to other elements in the diet in
15 any sense at all ----
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But I am certainly not going to elaborate in
18 any way at all upon the meaning as I have expressed it
19 there. But cannot the Defendants say that use of the words
20 "may well make your diet high in fat" brings in questions
21 like "whether if you have one McDonald's meal a week that
22 might well make your diet high in fat" etc.?
23
24 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, they have to go further than that on this
25 meaning. They would have to say not only one meal a week
26 but one meal a month which is regular and not occasional.
27
28 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not know.
29
30 MR. RAMPTON: The reason I -----
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am disinclined to make any further findings
33 either by inference, even by inference, let alone
34 expressly, at this stage so as to say that I do not want to
35 hear any more evidence if anyone wants to call it or
36 cross-examine a witness who has already been called with
37 these matters in mind.
38
39 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, that would be, with respect, I use the
40 word "illegitimate" but, having found the natural and
41 ordinary meaning and, in doing that, having ignored the
42 evidence, it would, in our respectful submission, be quite
43 wrong to go back and rewrite the meaning in the light of
44 evidence which has been or might be given in the future.
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am certainly not going to do that.
47 I purposely closed my mind, in so far as I have not
48 forgotten it already, to the evidence which I had already
49 heard. In fact, only as this discussion starts am
50 I thinking back to what the consequences of the meaning
51 I found might be so far as the evidence in the case is
52 concerned.
53
54 MR. RAMPTON: Yes. That is, as I say, why we believe that we
55 have to take this meaning as it stands, subject to that one
56 gloss which I have suggested, which need not be written in
57 but must be there because of what your Lordship said on
58 page 24 about occasional meals. We must take it as it
59 stands. I doubt whether I could say that your Lordship has
60 no power to rewrite it; I am not sure about that. Your
