The Guardian Wednesday January 13, 1999 McLibel 2: the dogged duo return with 63 objections The fast food firm and the anarchists it sued are back in court in a sequel to Britain's most gruelling defamation case. John Vidal reports The scene and cast for McLibel 2 is almost the same as when the epic seemingly closed 18 months ago, with fast food multinational McDonald's and penniless anarchists Dave Morris and Helen Steel exhausted after seven years litigation and 314 days locked together in the high court over a leaflet issued almost 12 years ago. In the appeal which started yesterday, the former postman and gardener are arguing against many of the 750 pages of judgment which Mr Justice Bell made in July 1996 after six months deliberation following McDonald's libel action. The years have changed little: the defendants are as dogged as ever, the McDonald's legal team still earns thousands of pounds a day and neither side has lost its distaste for the other. But Mr Justice Bell, one of the most patient of judges, has been replaced by three Court of Appeal judges, the venue has moved to Court 1 from Court 35 in the Royal Courts of Justice, Mr Morris has a new pullover and Ms Steel is even more impressive as a self-taught lawyer. McDonald's won most of the decisions last time, with the judge ruling that it had been libelled by allegations including claims that it destroyed the environment and poisoned its customers. But it has not appealed against Mr Justice Bell's judgment that it does "exploit children", "is cruel to some animals" and "pays low wages". It has not tried to extract the #60,000 awarded it from the defendants. Ms Steel and Mr Morris are appealing on 63 points of principle and fact. They range from freedom of speech, abuse of process and Mr Justice Bell's "bias", to many legal errors that they claim he made with "extreme and legalistic interpretations". No one was yesterday guessing how long McLibel 2 will take but the three judges are expected to be strict over court time. Yesterday Ms Steel and Mr Morris were given just two days to make their first seven points and were denied leave by the House of Lords to delay the appeal to give them more time to prepare their case. "Two or three months?" suggested Ms Steel and Mr Morris's camp. "Christ knows," Richard Rampton, QC for McDonald's, said privately. In 1993 he had argued that the trial would need "three to four weeks", instead of the 2 1/2 years it took. Ms Steel and Mr Morris are considering taking the case to Europe. Ms Steel and Mr Morris argued yesterday that the libel laws were being used as a form of censorship and that multinational companies were well able to defend themselves. They should not be able to sue their critics, Mr Morris said. "The ever-increasing power of multinational corporations in society and their lack of accountability is giving rise to serious public concern and criticism. A whole movement is growing up of people concerned to challenge that power," he said. He called for a change, or reinterpretation, of the libel laws to protect campaigning organisations, arguing that the law that bars the police and local authorities from suing members of the public should be extended to companies. Mr Morris said the trial was an abuse of the legal process because he and Ms Steel had been forced to represent themselves as legal aid was not available for libel cases. The two campaigners are also appealing against the finding by the High Court that they libelled McDonald's, and claim Mr Justice Bell erred in not clearing them completely after he ruled that some of their claims were correct. "These findings result in such considerable injury to McDonald's reputation that the unproven allegations don't have any further material effect," Mr Morris said. Ms Steel argued that the leaflet they were handing out should have been covered by qualified privilege, because it was reporting what other environmental organisations and health experts - including the World Health Organisation - were saying about McDonald's. "It was reporting on what someone else had said and it would be unreasonable or impossible for us to be able to prove every one of the facts in the leaflet," she said. Neither of them had written or printed the leaflet and the ruling that their involvement in London Greenpeace showed "joint enterprise" contravened the European Convention of Human Rights. The hearing was adjourned.
