Day 233 - 26 03 96 - Page 46
DAY 233
1 exist.
2
3 My Lord, there are three questions: are they entitled to
4 require performance with the specification -- and it is the
5 international specification which no doubt applies between
6 the Corporation and the -- well, I say that. I am not even
7 sure that that is right, actually. The international
8 specification would apply, I suspect, between McDonald's
9 Costa Rica and their suppliers of patties, imposed no doubt
10 from Oakbrook. I am not at all sure that I am willing to
11 accept that a contract, such as it may be, between the
12 corporation and the joint venture partner in the particular
13 locality would contain such a term, because it is not a
14 contract for the supply of beef or beef patties; and it is
15 to that supply that the specification, the explicit
16 specification, against the use of rainforest or
17 ex-rainforest beef is applied. So, as with Mr. Walker, the
18 document concerned, the contractual document containing
19 that specification, would bind the supplier of the beef to
20 McDonald's in the particular country concerned. That is
21 the first question.
22
23 Whether as a matter of agreement between the Corporation
24 and the joint venture partner, the Corporation is entitled
25 to insist that the joint venture partner carries out its
26 wishes in this matter, the answer to that is probably
27 "yes". I do not know, but I suspect on balance of
28 probabilities the answer is probably, yes, the Corporation
29 probably would make it a condition of the contract between
30 itself and the joint venture partner that its wishes in
31 this matter are observed. Probably, also -----
32
33 MR. MORRIS: Probably would make it?
34
35 MR. RAMPTON: Probably would be, yes, probably -- although I do
36 not know. Probably, also, the Corporation would be able to
37 extract written or oral confirmation in this form: "Yes,
38 we comply with that specification." Whether -- and this is
39 the big question -- the Corporation would be entitled to go
40 a step further and say, "We demand to see the written
41 confirmations which you have from your meat suppliers" is a
42 much more difficult question, if I may respectfully say
43 so. A fortiori, if the Corporation said: "We want to see
44 those documents which you can get from your meat supplier,
45 your cattle slaughterer, and which we are entitled to see
46 in the ordinary course of your business with them, we want
47 them which we do not have because we want to conduct a
48 propaganda exercise or a publicity exercise to the world at
49 large", I would very much doubt. By parity of reasoning,
50 I very much doubt whether the Corporation would have power
51 to say -----
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Express it another way. Forget words like
54 "propaganda". "To protect ourselves from allegations that
55 our patties do not conform to this health provision, or to
56 protect ourselves from allegations that meat comes from
57 cattle reared on ex-rainforest land." All this is without
58 prejudice to whether I decide that there is absolutely any
59 use at all in seeing these documents in the light of the
60 amount of evidence we have had already.
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