The 1997 case of McDonalds v Steel & Morris was notable in a number of respects. It provided intriguing reading in the silly season, ran for 314 days and produced a judgment of several hundred pages. It was also one of the first cases to be reported by the Court Service on the web (in summary).
Steel and Morris, who conducted their own defence, were ordered to pay £40,000 over a leaflet McDonalds said was damaging. But the case was also a public relations disaster for McDonalds as the judge also ruled that the leaflet had correctly accused the corporation of paying low wages, being responsible for cruelty to some of the animals used in its products and exploiting children in advertising campaigns.
The pair, represented this time, have now taken the government to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that English law, in denying legal aid in libel cases, produced a stark inequality between ordinary individuals and a massive corporation and clearly did not meet the requirements of the Human Rights convention which guarantees the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression. Judgment is expected at the end of 2004.
