Day 286 - 24 Oct 96 - Page 04
1 because I think it is pretty clear what is happening on the
2 ground to a large extent. But I will flag up the important
3 things.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is what I want you to do, yes.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: Right. Let me just sit down a minute. I am going
8 to come to Brazil.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
11
12 MR. MORRIS: It might be helpful to have a map. I do not know
13 how much reference I am going to make to it.
14
15 First of all, I want to make a general point about Brazil,
16 about Brazil's relevance to this case, which I touched on
17 yesterday, that it was unfortunate that Brazil only came
18 into the case as a result of an error from the plaintiffs
19 in disclosing a very important document. I think that
20 illustrates some of what we have been saying about the
21 unfairness - this is the legal submission made - about the
22 current libel laws and the burden of proof being entirely
23 on the defence, and we would say that McDonald's failure to
24 defend the counterclaim, effectively, by defending the
25 issues, having an obligation to defend the issues, and it
26 seems that they are trying to hide behind a privileged
27 self-defence argument as a way of avoiding having to deal
28 with the truth or otherwise of what they said in their
29 defamatory literature published about me and Helen, which
30 seems to me to be an abuse of the spirit of the law and the
31 law itself.
32
33 That is compounded by the fact that even when Brazil came
34 into the case we had to struggle very hard to get them to
35 hand over information about their supply sources. We would
36 argue, and I did argue, if you remember, when we got
37 Mr. Morganti's statement, that it was ambiguous. And I did
38 not succeed in convincing you at that time, but as it later
39 turned out, because of the completely logical inconsistency
40 of the yellow flashes in Goiana, it was completely clear
41 there must be other supply sources that were not mentioned,
42 that were not identified in Brazil.
43
44 Then, again by good fortune, our final witness on Brazil
45 had been delayed from coming into the witness box because
46 she had been in Brazil. That is Susan Branford. By good
47 fortune, in terms of the public interest in this case, she
48 had personal knowledge of the areas which had just been
49 identified, which was all a chance chain of events really
50 in terms of McDonald's having failed to fulfil, we believe,
51 their obligations, whether moral or legal, to provide
52 information to defend the counterclaim and to prosecute
53 their case.
54
55 So can I just say that if we had had that information, say
56 for example about the areas of Gioias that we now know are
57 particularly relevant, then we would have been able to get
58 proper legal advice -- sorry, not legal -- legal and expert
59 advice, where we were unable to get such advice and give
60 testimony from our other witnesses, Fiona Watson, George
