Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 18

     
     1        not very much but a bit stronger than your Lordship's
     2        eventual meaning, and I proposed that it must mean that
     3        food is actually dangerous, just as though it were
     4        poisonous, and that was rejected.  One of the reasons why
     5        it was rejected was that your Lordship said -- I am trying
     6        to find it. I will shut up, if I may, until I have actually
     7        found it.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There was a paragraph to the effect that the
    10        reader would see from the text that the danger of
    11        McDonald's food is alleged to arise from its effect upon
    12        the customer's diet.
    13
    14   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  The text makes a distinction between diet and
    17        McDonald's meals.
    18
    19   MR. RAMPTON:  That is right.
    20
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I was making the distinction that it was not
    22        saying that if you eat a McDonald's meal you will suffer
    23        this risk.
    24
    25   MR. RAMPTON:  That is right.  I took the word "occasional" from
    26        your Lordship.  It is on page 24 of the ruling, at letter
    27        D.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let me just find that.
    30
    31   MR. RAMPTON:  The date, my Lord, is 20th November 1995.
    32
    33   MR. JUSTICE BELL: 11B?
    34
    35   MR. RAMPTON:  24D, my Lord.
    36
    37   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  The part I was thinking of is the
    38        paragraph beginning at B.
    39
    40   MR. RAMPTON:  Where is that, my Lord?
    41
    42   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  24B.
    43
    44   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  It is the end of that paragraph, which is
    45        the one that contains what I take to be -- and I certainly,
    46        as an observer of the world, would say was right -- a
    47        finding by your Lordship that the ordinary reader of the
    48        leaflet would not have to have the benefit of being in this
    49        court for two and a half years in order to realise that the
    50        occasional meal was not going to damage his health. 
    51 
    52   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes. 
    53
    54   MR. RAMPTON:  That is why I imported that qualification.  It
    55        does not, in the end, really make any difference at all,
    56        because the meaning then is: if you eat this food more than
    57        occasionally, you run a very real risk of your diet
    58        becoming wrong and your getting, as a result, cancer and
    59        heart disease.
    60