Day 131 - 06 Jun 95 - Page 24

     
     1        draws the sting of any attack the Defendants may in due
     2        course choose to make along the lines:  "Oh, well, it might
     3        have been OK back in the 1980s, but look, you have become a
     4        monstrously inefficient or exploitative organisation since
     5        then."
     6
     7        My Lord, it is not of great weight, I readily confess.  But
     8        there is one question I would like to ask.
     9
    10   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I did not mean to interrupt Mr. Purslow's
    11        evidence, but it may have some general significance.  What
    12        I had thought the possible (and I am not drawing any
    13        conclusion on it now) significance of developments since
    14        is, at least in so far as you may argue they are part of a
    15        continuing -- they might be indicative of McDonald's (you
    16        would say good) attitude.  So, without indicating a view on
    17        that, I can see the possible relevance of that.
    18
    19        I thought there might also be some relevance to the remedy,
    20        or one of them, which is sought in this case, in that if
         I thought that the leaflet or any parts of it were
    22        defamatory, it might be relevant to see not only what the
    23        position was in 1989 or 1990, but what it is today.  But
    24        that is a complete irrelevance?
    25
    26   MR. RAMPTON:  It is not, my Lord.  It is somewhat of a refined
    27        concept, because what it might lead to is this:  your
    28        Lordship might find that something which is in the leaflet
    29        might -- and I hesitate to go any further down the road
    30        than that -- might conceivably find that some part of the
    31        leaflet was true of McDonald's in, let us say, 1989, but
    32        was no longer so.  The consequence would be that the
    33        Defendants would be confined upon a granting of an
    34        injunction to an allegation about what had been the state
    35        of affairs in 1980 or 1990, but would not be permitted to
    36        say that it was still true.
    37
    38        My Lord, from the view -- I make no secret of this view --
    39        that I presently take of the evidence so far, that is not
    40        going to be a matter which has any great importance at the
         end of the case.
    42
    43   MR. MORRIS:  I do not necessarily agree with any of that.
    44
    45   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You are not being asked to agree.  You asked
    46        for an explanation of what, if anything, its relevance is.
    47        That is the way it is put.
    48
    49   MR. MORRIS:  Can I just say that the actual specific point
    50        I raised was about documents which have been created since 
    51        the trial started.  That is the point I was making. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I do not think there is any technical
    54        significance in that.  You may, I do not know, produce an
    55        argument that this, that or the other -- I am not just
    56        thinking of the employment context, but in some other
    57        context, as has now been done -- because the situation was
    58        unsatisfactory and the issues in this trial have made
    59        McDonald's act, by the same token as you have argued that
    60        people who can pay for improvements have an effect.