Day 025 - 16 Sep 94 - Page 14
1 law, when you come to construe a document, I do not mean a
2 legal document, I mean a document in ordinary usage, is it
3 permitted to snatch this or that sentence out of context
4 to say that proves my point, or not?
5 A. Well, if I may correct you, Mr. Rampton; I do not
6 pretend to be an expert on all aspects of American law.
7 There are many aspects of it that avoid me. As to false
8 advertising or consumer protection laws, specifically as
9 they apply to nutrition and diet, I do claim to be an
10 expert.
11
12 Q. Apply my question to that expertise or your expertise to
13 my question, if you like?
14 A. What type of document are you asking me?
15
16 Q. I am going to come to the McDonald's advertisement in a
17 minute, but suppose you are attacking an advertisement in
18 court, will the court be constrained by American law to
19 read the document as a whole before it reaches a
20 conclusion about its deceptive quality or otherwise?
21 A. Again, only speaking for an American court, I have
22 already demonstrated today my ignorance of English law.
23
24 Q. I am asking about American law.
25 A. Sorry. No, the answer would be that a court may look
26 at either. It is -- if I may explain, in construing an
27 advertisement (or advertisement, as you say) it does not
28 help a defendant, a company, that is accused of deceptive
29 advertising to say that every sentence in the document is
30 true if the document as a whole, nonetheless, conveys a
31 misleading impression.
32
33 However, the converse does not avail the defendant
34 either. A document as a whole, when read by a learned
35 judge, may convey what is deemed to be an accurate
36 impression, but if that advertisement contains a false
37 statement or, for that matter, a statement for which the
38 company has not in advance had adequate substantiation,
39 that advertisement is deceptive as well.
40
41 So a court, while it may look at the overall impression
42 left by the document, must also look at the individual
43 statements in the document. There are different types of
44 consumers who take from advertisements in different ways;
45 some of them get nothing but the overall impression; as to
46 them there is no deception. Some of them read each and
47 every word of that advertisement, and as to them, if they
48 read the words that the advertiser prepared and
49 deliberately put into the advertisement and one word or
50 one sentence or one phrase of that document is false or
51 misleading, that ad is deceptive and is a violation of
52 State and United States federal law.
53
54 Q. Can I make perhaps a crude summary of what you have just
55 told me to see if I have understood it? An American court
56 will address an inaccurate or false statement of fact in
57 its particular respects; is that right? In other
58 words -----
59 A. I think it was sufficiently uncrude, Mr. Rampton, that
60 I did not understand your question.
