Day 145 - 29 Jun 95 - Page 25
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2 MR. RAMPTON: It does not matter who it was, my Lord.
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4 MR. MORRIS: It is not a busy-body, is it, if it is the State
5 Auditor General.
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7 MR. RAMPTON: It has nothing to do with this case. This is
8 about McDonald's.
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10 MR. MORRIS: It is important in terms that violations may be
11 occurring on a wide scale but they are not identified by
12 fines.
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14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just give this a bit of thought and then we
15 will adjourn for the mid-day break. What are you seeking
16 to do is show that McDonald's, or those for whom they can
17 reasonably be argued to be responsible, have broken in this
18 instance Child Labour Laws.
19
20 Mr. Stein has accepted Micale -- he has not accepted
21 responsibility for Micale but he has accepted the citations
22 in relation to Micale. He has said that he cannot help you
23 on the other specific matters. It does not establish
24 anything in your favour then, even if you were to establish
25 that the enforcement agencies were lacking in some way,
26 because you have a gap in the middle at the moment which
27 you may feel as to anything going wrong. That lack of
28 energy by the enforcement agencies does not begin to
29 establish that something has gone wrong.
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31 MR. MORRIS: I understand that, but if we plead the specifics
32 and McDonald's make admissions on all those specifics, it
33 will be helpful to know the context on which those fines
34 are made, i.e. that if there are only 15 inspectors in the
35 Illinois area relevant in this particular -----
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37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am going to ask a question about this, then
38 I want you to leave this topic. You can pick it up later
39 as part of your own case, if it is actually relevant, but
40 I really do not think we can spend too much time on it.
41 (To the witness): Do you know anything about the way the
42 -- you must know, I suppose, something about the way the
43 enforcement agencies in the area of Child Labour Law
44 operate in the United States?
45 A. Yes, my Lord.
46
47 Q. Do you know anything about the starting rates of
48 enforcement agencies, for instance, since Mr. Morris has
49 started with this, Chicago or Illinois?
50 A. No, my Lord, and if I can for a moment, you have
51 federal agents, you have state agents, you have local
52 agents. I have no idea what their staffing levels are.
53 I just -- I know they are in our restaurants all the --
54 I call it "all the time" -- on a constant basis looking at
55 our records, etc. etc., but I do not know specifically the
56 number of investigators that each agency has. I do not
57 even have a general idea of how many they have, my Lord.
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You really must leave it there, I think,
60 because after being against you cross-examining on the
