
McLibel Case - feross
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
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hjb
There's a line in there that really stands out to me:

>McDonald's spent several million pounds, while Steel and Morris spent
£30,000; this disparity in funds meant Steel and Morris were not able to call
all the witnesses they wanted, especially witnesses from South America who
were intended to support their claims about McDonald's activities in that
continent's rainforests.

It's pretty galling that the justice system, which is a public tool, being
gamed in this way by a party with vastly greater assets. It's a bit tricky to
see exactly how to fix this, since you don't really want to just give each
side a court-appointed lawyer: you really should get to pick your own lawyer.
But what to do about the fact that you might want to pick an expensive lawyer?

It seems to me that one compromise would be to recognize that you can
legitimately have a strong interest in the case having a just outcome, and
thus want to spend more money fighting it, while at the same time not allowing
one side to outspend the other.

One way to achieve this would be requiring that each side can only pay into a
common pool of money, which is then split equally between the defence and
prosecution.

The practical difficulty in implementing this is that a large company (e.g.
McDonalds) will have in-house counsel who are not just hired for solely this
case, and it would be hard to dis-entangle just how much of their salary
should be counted as being for this particular case.

~~~
grecy
> _it 's a bit tricky to see exactly how to fix this_

Put a hard limit on the amount of money that is allowed to be spent, and that
limit is based on how much the less wealthy can spend.

If the more wealthy wants to spend more, they can give money to the other side
so they can spend equally huge amounts.

~~~
Hickfang
@grecy: “Put a hard limit on the amount of money that is allowed to be spent,
and that limit is based on how much the less wealthy can spend.”

“If the more wealthy wants to spend more, they can give money to the other
side so they can spend equally huge amounts.”

What was wrong with this comment?

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arooaroo
There's a good doc on YouTube covering the case. The pressure looks immense.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V58kK4r26yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V58kK4r26yk)

Interesting aside: one of the pro bono lawyers was Keir Starmer, now Sir Keir
Starmer who went on to become Director of Public Prosecutions, before entering
politics, and recently elected Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition.
By all accounts he's showing up our utterly useless PM for the incompetent
fool he is.

~~~
zimpenfish
> By all accounts he's showing up our utterly useless PM for the incompetent
> fool he is.

To be fair, that's not a plus point for Starmer since that's the lowest of low
bars. I'd expect anyone capable of even the basest level of critical thinking
and fact checking to wipe the floor with Johnson (and most of the Tory party.)

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Causality1
"English libel defendants must prove that each statement is true" is one of
those sentences that rock you for a moment and remind you that you really
can't pretend that all Western Democracies are basically the same.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Yes. Worse, as I understand it, public figures may have lawful claims for
defamation _even if_ all statements are _already known true_ to the court!
This is a mind-boggling situation, and helps contextualize why the United
Nations Human Rights Committee recommends that libel and slander be
decriminalized. It makes the USA's defamation laws, SLAPP-happy as they are,
look positively humane by comparison.

~~~
crazygringo
> _even if all statements are already known true to the court_

Can you expand on what that means?

In my understanding, courts don't presumptively "already know" anything at
all, except law and precedent. The whole point of a suit is that two parties
are _contesting_ knowledge, interpretation, or law. Even if a court's judge(s)
_suppose(s)_ something to be true, isn't the whole point that the defendent
claims it to be false and is therefore entitled to a hearing?

~~~
jldugger
I believe the point OP is making is that you can be accused of libel for
speaking the truth.

~~~
techbio
I think you mean convicted, anyone can be accused of anything at any time.

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mjw1007
This is perhaps the most interesting part:

« In the course of the UK undercover policing relationships scandal it was
revealed that one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" was Bob Lambert, an
undercover police officer who infiltrated London Greenpeace; John Dines,
another undercover officer, was also Helen Steel's partner for two years. »

~~~
sterlind
Apparently Bob Lambert also had four sexual relationships while undercover,
even fathering a child with one of them despite already having a wife and
kids. One woman said she felt "raped by the state" when she learned who he
really was, another whom he got pregnant got some money in a lawsuit at least.
[0]

What an unbelievably shitty thing to do. Some people have no heart.

0\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_poli...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_\(undercover_police_officer\))

~~~
gowld
Bob Lambert is a war criminal who abused the people he was suppose to be
protecting What he did (with the support of the Britisht government) was so
awful that there isn't even a legal term for what he did.

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renewiltord
The great beauty of the anonymous Internet is that people now believe any
libelous claims published on random sites. The democratization of propaganda
has diminished the power of the press. Thankfully so, since the press has
always been an instrument of propaganda.

Who are you going to stop, McDonalds? Reddit's /u/blazeit420? You don't know
who he is. And a ban will just result in /u/cockscrew69 picking up the ball.

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klyrs
> [McDonalds] specified they would drop the case if Steel and Morris agreed to
> "stop criticising McDonald's".[15] Steel and Morris secretly recorded the
> meeting, in which McDonald's said the pair could criticise McDonald's
> privately to friends but must cease talking to the media or distributing
> leaflets. Steel and Morris wrote a letter in response saying they would
> agree to the terms if McDonald's ceased advertising its products and instead
> only recommended the restaurant privately to friends.

Brilliant :D

