Making Mincemeat of McDonald’s

At the end of June, the longest-running libel case in the history of the British courts completed its second year. On one side, the mighty McDonald’s Corp., with $26 billion in annual sales worldwide; on the other, a couple of anarchists--a 30-year-old gardener and a 42-year-old former postman--with an annual joint income of about $11,000.

It all began in 1986 when a 30-strong group called London Greenpeace produced a “fact sheet” called “What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?--Everything They Don’t Want You to Know.”

It was a six-page denunciation of McDonald’s for destroying rain forest in the Amazon and Costa Rica by fostering cattle ranches, for exploiting its workers, for promoting unhealthy food, for deceptive advertising and for excessive packaging and waste. Among the terms creating grave disquiet at McDonald’s headquarters were “McTorture,” “McCancer,” “McMurder,” “McGreedy” and “McProfits.”

McDonald’s engaged the services of seven private investigators to infiltrate London Greenpeace in October 1989. The infiltrators (one of whom had subsequent regrets and is now testifying for the defense) took notes, followed organizers to their homes, stole letters and, to demonstrate their bona fides, eagerly volunteered to distribute the fact sheet denouncing the company that had secretly hired them.

In September 1990, McDonald’s issued libel writs against the five members of London Greenpeace the company considered responsible for the fact sheet. It’s nearly impossible to fight a libel action without big money, and in England, legal aid is unavailable in a libel fight. Three of the five apologized and agreed not to distribute the fact sheet. Helen Steel held firm and persuaded Dave Morris to join her.

Given three weeks by a judge to convince him that they had a case, Steel and Morris managed to round up more than 65 statements backing their claims from forest ecologists, health experts, advertising executives, former McDonald’s employees and others. McDonald’s rushed for the heavy guns, hiring Richard Rampton to be its lead barrister at $3,000 a day. Rampton immediately earned his money by persuading a judge in 1993 that the scientific evidence was so complex that no jury would understand it, that the case would be better heard before a judge. Steel and Morris lost their 12 best friends.

In 1994, McDonald’s blundered, publishing its own leaflet titled “Why McDonald’s Is Going to Court,” denouncing Steel and Morris as liars. Steel and Morris countersued. McDonald’s now had to prove that the statements in the fact sheet were lies.

Day after day, for 24 months, Steel and Morris have hauled McDonald’s executives and experts onto the witness stand and roasted them on the grill.

They asked Dr. Sydney Arnott, McDonald’s cancer expert, his opinion on the following statement: “A diet high in fat, sugar, animal products and salts, and low in fiber, vitamins and minerals is linked with cancer of the breast and bowel and heart disease.” Arnott confidently replied, “If it is being directed to the public, then I would say it is a very reasonable thing to say.” Alas for McDonald’s, the statement was an extract from the London Greenpeace fact sheet and had been characterized by Rampton as the central defamatory allegation, which could be “the kiss of death” for a fast food company like McDonald’s.

One of the points in the fact sheet was that McDonald’s had a long-term strategy to change Asian dietary patterns. A statement from the president of McDonald’s, Japan, said, “the reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skin is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for 2,000 years; if we eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for a 1,000 years, we will become taller, our skin will become white and our hair blond.”

As to the company’s treatment of workers. “If anyone joined a union or even seriously considered joining a union,” Siamak Alimi testified, “they would be sacked.” Floor manager Simon Gibney said, “The labor rate was the only thing taken into account when setting staffing levels. Safety played absolutely no part.” This statement somewhat eroded the romantic effusions of Paul Preston, president of McDonald’s U.K., who exclaimed, “McDonald’s isn’t a job. It’s a life. Our employees have catsup in their veins.”

There has been a final bizarre twist. Steel and Morris, an appeals court has ruled, must be held responsible for every occasion on which the fact sheet was distributed. In turn, Steel and Morris are saying that if they are to be held responsible, so must three McDonald’s infiltrators who have admitted distributing the fact sheet and who, if McDonald’s wins, will be liable to McDonald’s for damages

But, of course, the three will claim they were acting as paid agents, so McDonald’s would end up suing its own people and paying them to pay any damages assessed by the judge. Thus--courtesy of two very resourceful anarchists--will the great McDonald’s libel case be reduced to extremely informative farce.