Day 206 - 22 Jan 96 - Page 14
1 content in a positive sense at all. Our problem with
2 Mr. North is the same, really, as it is with Dr. Millstone,
3 that this later statement adds nothing to what he has
4 already said in the witness box and in his earlier
5 statement, which is that -- and I think I summarised it
6 last Wednesday -- an appearance of visual hygiene is no
7 guarantee of actual food safety, which, as I said on
8 Wednesday and I repeat now, is wholly uncontroversial;
9 nobody ever supposed that it was.
10
11 The other thing he says which he has already said in his
12 evidence is that, well, the Plaintiffs might have picked up
13 on the problems that may arise -- they do not arise very
14 often -- might have picked up on those because of what
15 happened in America in the early 1980s.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you remind me, had Dr. North seen the
18 Preston report when he gave evidence?
19
20 MR. RAMPTON: I do not know whether he had or whether he had
21 not, but the Defendants kept trying to show it to him in
22 court. I am not clear whether he read it. I do not even
23 know whether he has read it now. What is clear from his
24 latest statement is that it does not take any detailed part
25 of the Preston report and use it as a basis for expert
26 commentary. All he does, in effect, is to say that this
27 tells us that you can have an E.coli outbreak or, indeed,
28 any other kind of outbreak, no matter how clean your
29 processes of manufacture and cooking and production may
30 appear to be. So be it. We all know, it is
31 uncontroversial, in the sense it is not contested, that a
32 mistake in cooking -- undercooking, for example -- if a
33 piece of meat or chicken is previously contaminated, may
34 result in food poisoning; and the question, really,
35 your Lordship has to decide at the end of the case is
36 (a) whether McDonald's take proper steps to prevent that
37 from happening so far as they possibly can -- and by
38 McDonald's, I include in this instance their suppliers --
39 and (b) what is the actual reality; how serious is the risk
40 in practice? Mr. North's further statement really does not
41 add anything, in our submission, to help your Lordship in
42 making that decision.
43
44 I cannot really say any more than that. I have no
45 particular desire to keep this statement out. What I have
46 every desire to do is not waste further court time
47 recalling Mr. North to read out his statement and then go
48 away again. If he had not already said it all, it might be
49 different, but he has. What he has not done, as I say, is
50 to go through the Preston report, pick up this, that or the
51 other finding, assume it on a hypothetical basis to be
52 true, and then say: "Well, McDonald's should have learned
53 this, that or the other lesson from this particular part of
54 the report." That was what he agreed with me, as
55 your Lordship recalls, he would do; and, in the light of
56 that, I said if that is what he does, then I will waiver
57 any requirement for a further pleading. But he has not
58 done it.
59
60 It is a raft of generalities, I am afraid, which, as I say,
