Day 068 - 16 Dec 94 - Page 03
1 MR. MORRIS: That was the originals as received.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So there has been no obliteration that you
4 are aware of, then?
5
6 MR. MORRIS: No. It is exactly what I got from them.
7
8 MR. RAMPTON: It would be most unusual for a US government
9 agency to send a letter to somebody in this country, a
10 formal letter answering a formal request, without its usual
11 seal, logo and address on it.
12
13 MR. MORRIS: All I can say is that we have two or three copies
14 of this letter, for some reason. I just assumed they were
15 all the same. It is possible one has a letterhead. I make
16 absolutely no bones about it; we got this about six months
17 ago. I said yesterday, when I apologised for serving them
18 late, that we had had the information for six months.
19 I did not realise that hygiene was going to be such a
20 problematic issue.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I suggest is that you have a look over
23 the weekend to see if you have any copy which has any more
24 on it, for whatever reason, than the one you have there.
25
26 MR. MORRIS: Yes. This one is not signed either, so maybe
27 I have a signed one.
28
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Have a look and see what you can find.
30
31 MR. MORRIS: Can I also say -----
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Hold on a moment. In your anxiety to deal
34 with that, you in fact interrupted Mr. Rampton. So let him
35 finish first, and then I will hear what you want to say.
36
37 MR. RAMPTON: I am perfectly content with the interruption. If
38 I am shown a real letter as opposed to copy letter, then my
39 suspicions may evaporate. I am interested to hear that the
40 Defendants have had this letter, with its accompanying
41 documents, for six months. One can, in fact, tell that or
42 deduce it, perhaps, from the last line of the second page
43 where there is the date of 7th June 1994. Sorry, it is
44 American. 6th July. The FSIS is the Federal -----
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Food Safety and Inspection Service. That
47 appears at the bottom of the first page.
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: That is right -- which organisation is the origin
50 of all or most of the following documents. I was able,
51 having spoken to Dr. Gomez Gonzalez last night, to
52 understand two things. He can tell the court a certain
53 amount about these documents. He has no direct knowledge
54 of the facts involved in each of these cases, quite
55 naturally. Only three of them, I think, concern McDonald's
56 products, anyway.
57
58 There is a good deal of information to be obtained from the
59 Inspection Service itself; also, obviously, from Tysons
60 themselves. These documents, having been served yesterday,
