page_title: McLibel case
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: McLibel case / History / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: The cover of the leaflet at the center of the w:McLibel case
context_page_description: McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris [1997] EWHC QB 366, known as "the McLibel case", was an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a factsheet critical of the company. Each of two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contested claims to be libellous and others to be true.
  The original case lasted nearly ten years which, according to the BBC, made it the longest-running libel case in English history. McDonald's announced it did not plan to collect the £40,000 it was awarded by the courts. Following the decision, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Steel & Morris v United Kingdom the pair had been denied a fair trial, in breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and their conduct should have been protected by Article 10 of the Convention, which protects the right to freedom of expression. The court awarded a judgement of £57,000 against the UK government. McDonald's itself was not involved in, or a party to, this action, as applications to the ECHR are independent cases filed against the relevant state.
context_section_description: Helen Steel and David Morris were two environmental activists of London Greenpeace, a small environmental campaigning group that existed between 1972 and 2001. In 1986, they co-authored a six-page leaflet titled "What's wrong with McDonald's: everything they don't want you to know" of which they distributed "a few hundred copies" in Strand, London. The leaflet accused the company of paying low wages, of cruelty to animals used in its products and other malpractices. The group were not affiliated with the larger Greenpeace International organisation, which they declined to join as they saw it as too "centralised and mainstream".
caption: "What's wrong with McDonald's: everything they don't want you to know", the cover of the leaflet at the center of the libel case
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