A big McWin for free speech

On Feb. 14, the same day that a federal appeals court ruled that reporters at The New York Times and Time magazine may face jail time if they refuse to testify before a grand jury about their confidential conversations with government sources, free-speech advocates across the pond in England earned a huge victory.

That day marked the end of the longest-running court case in English history -- what came to be known as the "McLibel Case." The European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling that two environmental activists convicted of defaming the McDonald's Corporation in 1997 were denied freedom of expression by the British government and did not receive a fair trial. The story dates back almost two decades to September 1985, when members of London Greenpeace began picketing a McDonald's location in central London. The next year, the activists began distributing leaflets titled, "What's wrong with McDonald's? Everything they don't want you to know." According to The Washington Post, the flyers displayed the words "McDollars, McGreedy, McCancer, McMurder, McDisease…" superimposed on the McDonald's golden arches. They also featured a cartoon of a man wearing a Stetson hat with a "Ronald McDonald" mask hiding his face. The leaflets accused McDonald's of obliterating rainforests, exploiting cheap labor and contributing to poverty in Third World countries. The flyers also alleged that the company was promoting unhealthy diets.

McDonald's dismissed the accusations, and claimed it was a good citizen. The corporation threatened legal action against numerous groups and activists, most of whom backed down. However, two activists in England, Dave Morris and Helen Steel, decided to stand up to the corporate behemoth. In 1990, McDonald's filed libel suits against Morris and Steel.

The defendants, an unemployed former postal worker and a part-time bartender, could not afford to hire lawyers and were forced to represent themselves with only the sporadic help of a few volunteer attorneys. McDonald's, on the other hand, sent a small army of libel specialists and researchers to represent the company in the lawsuit. According to The Washington Post, court transcripts of the trial were approximately 20,000 pages long. Around 40,000 pages of documentary evidence were presented and 130 witnesses testified. In a 762-page judgment in 1997, a court ruled for McDonald's on most charges and awarded the company a $98,000 libel judgment. When it was all the over, the "McLibel Case" had consumed 313 days in court over a period of two-and-a-half years and had cost McDonald's upwards of $16 million in legal fees.

In 2000, the two activists filed suit against the British government at the European Court of Human Rights. Morris and Steel contended that the government's refusal to provide legal aid denied them a free hearing and their right to an adequate legal defense, a violation of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. On Feb. 14, the court finally issued its ruling. A seven-judge panel based in Strasbourg, France, reversed the 1997 judgment and ruled unanimously that the British government should have given Morris and Steel legal aid so they could effectively defend themselves. In its statement, the court said, "The proceedings and their outcome constituted a disproportionate interference with [Morris and Steel's] right to freedom of expression." The panel also stated that English law had unfairly put an "intolerable burden" of proof on the defendants to prove the truthfulness of every word in the flyers that they circulated but did not actually produce. The decision dealt a blow not only to the original plaintiff, McDonald's, but also to Britain's laws governing libel, which, unlike American laws, generally favor plaintiffs. The court ordered that the British government pay Morris and Steel damages totaling 35,000 Euros (around $45,000).

"We won hands down on both our points – that the libel laws in this country are oppressive and they're unfair," Morris told The Washington Post.

In this day and age when the government is becoming increasingly powerful over the media and public opinion -- covertly paying pundits like Armstrong Williams to promote its agenda on the airwaves, for example -- we are now forced to look across our borders for positive examples of the triumph of truly free expression, as demonstrated in Britain in the "McLibel Case." Hopefully, free speech, one of the founding principles of the United States, and its tremendous power will soon prove unequivocally victorious over government-funded propaganda in our own country.