McLibel Case; UK's longest court battle ends

Glenn Frankel of the Washington Post Foreign Service reports:

"The longest-running case in English legal history neared the end of the road Tuesday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that two environmental activists whom McDonald's successfully sued for libel 15 years ago did not receive a fair trial and had been denied freedom of expression.

A triumphant Dave Morris and Helen Steel stood outside the McDonald's in central London where the saga began two decades ago and declared total victory over the fast-food giant. They and their joyous supporters handed out copies of a scathing anti-McDonald's leaflet similar to the one that triggered the original libel suit, and they pledged to renew their campaign against McDonald's and other corporate behemoths that they claim are ruining the world's agriculture, environment and large intestines.

The McLibel Case, as it came to be known, consumed 314 days in court and cost McDonald's more than $16 million in legal fees as well as a super-sized helping of bad publicity. Although a British judge upheld the activists' right to make some of their allegations, McDonald's won the original verdict in 1997 and a $98,000 libel award. That sum was reduced by one-third on appeal.

On Tuesday, the rest of it went down the drain. A seven-judge panel in Strasbourg, France, threw out the original judgment, ruling unanimously that Morris and Steel should have received legal aid from the British government to defend themselves. The ruling was a blow not only to McDonald's but to Britain's libel laws, which, compared with U.S. laws, tend to favor plaintiffs."

The article goes on to explain what started all the fuss.

"

It all began in September 1985 when activists for London Greenpeace -- no relation to the international Greenpeace group -- started picketing McDonald's on the Strand. The following year they handed out a five-page leaflet titled "What's wrong with McDonald's." It displayed a cartoon of a man wearing a Stetson hat and hiding behind a "Ronald McDonald" clown mask, along with the words "McDollars, McGreedy, McCancer, McMurder, McDisease . . . " superimposed over the golden arches symbol.

The leaflet accused the company of contributing to Third World poverty, destroying rain forests, exploiting cheap labor and using deceptive advertising, as well as poisoning children with bad food.

McDonald's denied the allegations, saying it was a good corporate citizen that paid close attention to environmental and nutritional concerns."

You can read the full article here.

Comments

[Kathy]

I'd followed this story in my days as a more activist vegan, and was glad to see how it turned out. Not sure if it was a case of the culture change over the years or if the law was on their side all along.

[Cynthia]

Personally, I'm horrified. What is the definition of libel, if not the telling of lies. Regardless of what one thinks of McDonald's food, bad taste and bad nutrition do not equate to destroying the rainforest (just how are they doing that?), empoverishing the Third World (so increasing desirable job opportunities -- in countries where no one makes any money, a job with an American company is a windfall -- is somehow making them poorer?), and exploiting the poor (so the people working at McDonald's could get higher paying jobs somewhere else? last time I looked, England was a free country, and people who didn't like an employer could look elsewhere). This is sort of the hateful rubbish that libel laws are supposed to protect people from.

There IS a limit to freedom of speech. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, for example. It's not just a bad idea, it's criminal. And you should not be able publish lies about people. Of course, Hollywood has been bending that rule for a long time, but we don't really expect Hollywood to be setting the standard for our morals.

I do think it's intersting that it was a French court that overturned an English ruling. That war is still going on, eh?

[Kathy]

But I don't think they were lies, and I'm a reasonable person. Guess "lying" is in the eyes of the beholder. It was hardly equal to yelling "fire".

The US has much more lenient libel laws, and seems like corporations are are doing just fine. Free speech, on the other hand, could use some help.

[john clare]

To claim this is the longest-running case in English history is utter twaddle. I started a court case against Mendip District Council back in 1976, and it is still running.
I used to use a solicitor who claimed to have worked on the longest running case, which he said concerned an inheritance, and because it took so long to settle, the original folks sold their rights, and they then sold theirs, and so on, and I was told correctly, or maybe incorrectly, that the case had been running since the 1830s. Anyone know if that's true?