Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 14
1 I was going to come back to bits and pieces about specific
2 people being involved. But if I just say that, certainly
3 in relation to Mike Love, it is clear from the fact that he
4 has put his name on all these letters and that he is
5 sending them out and that he, personally, does not care
6 about distributing inaccurate, false information about
7 myself and Mr. Morris, and information which the Company
8 clearly knows to be false -- because, for example, on its
9 own admission in the pleadings, only two letters had been
10 sent to anybody, and one of them was about a different
11 leaflet and the second one was enclosing the writ. So, by
12 their own admission, their press releases and leaflets are
13 false.
14
15 That part of the press release and of the leaflet --
16 because it is an allegation which appears in both -- is a
17 fundamental part of the publication; it is designed to
18 discredit myself and Mr. Morris by asserting that we are
19 being completely unreasonable and ignoring all the facts
20 that have been put in front of us to show us that the
21 fact sheet is untrue; and that McDonald's have bent over
22 backwards to try and resolve this amicably. It is all
23 complete lies, because it is quite obvious that they never
24 wrote to us once before they served the writs on us and
25 started this trial, or started the libel case against us.
26
27 Can I just say, on that point, that in tab 8 of the
28 supplementary list 9, there is the letter dated
29 18th May 1994 to a Mr. Ian Jones, who is a member of the
30 public; and this is from Edie Bensilum, so this could also
31 be taken as evidence of malice on her part. She was
32 involved with the preparation of the Plaintiffs' press
33 releases and leaflets.
34
35 She says in this letter: "As you have seen, the allegations
36 in their leaflet are of an extremely serious nature and
37 potentially very damaging. Our initial contact with the
38 group was a letter written in December 1984, and since that
39 time we have made repeated attempts to present our position
40 to the group and to demonstrate to them the fact that their
41 allegations were untrue. However, they have ignored our
42 correspondence and refused to stop further publication of
43 the leaflet. After several approaches, we finally felt we
44 had no option but to seek to demonstrate publicly that the
45 contents of the leaflet were untrue. So, as a last resort,
46 legal proceedings were issued back in 1990."
47
48 This just demonstrates very clearly the point that I was
49 making, that McDonald's are trying to paint themselves as
50 desperate and at the end of their tether with these
51 unreasonable people (myself and Mr. Morris) who have
52 ignored all this advice, and the demonstration that the
53 allegations in the leaflets are untrue, and that we have
54 gone on and ignored all these appeals to stop publication
55 and, therefore, they have no other option but to take us to
56 court. It is all complete rubbish, as the Plaintiffs
57 know. They made no such attempt; they made no attempt
58 whatsoever to persuade either myself, Mr. Morris or anybody
59 else in London Greenpeace that the fact sheet was, in their
60 views, inaccurate.
