page_title: McDonald's legal cases
section_title: McLibel (UK)
hierarchical_section_title: McDonald's legal cases / Defamation / McLibel (UK)
caption_attribution_description: an anti-McDonald’s leafletting campaign in front of the McDonald’s restaurant in Leicester Square, London, during the European Social Forum season, 2004-10-16. Copyright © Kaihsu Tai
context_page_description: McDonald's has been involved in a number of lawsuits and other legal cases in the course of the fast food chain's 70-year history. Many of these have involved trademark issues, but McDonald's has also launched a defamation suit which has been described as "the biggest corporate PR disaster in history".
context_section_description: In 1990, McDonald's took environmental campaigners Helen Steel and Dave Morris to court after they distributed leaflets entitled "What's Wrong with McDonald's?" on the streets of London. The high-profile trial, which came to be known as the McLibel Case, lasted nearly ten years, the longest in English legal history.
  Though a High Court judge eventually ruled in favour of McDonald's on some counts, John Vidal called it a Pyrrhic victory. The extended legal battle was a PR disaster, with every aspect of the company's working practices being scrutinised and the media presenting the case as a David and Goliath battle. Additionally, the damages received were negligible compared to the company's estimated £10 million legal costs because the court ruled in favour of a number of the defendants' claims, including that McDonald's exploited children in its advertising, was anti-trade union and indirectly exploited and caused suffering to animals. McDonald's was awarded £60,000 damages, which was later reduced to £40,000 by the Court of Appeal. Steel and Morris announced they had no intention of ever paying, and the company later confirmed it would not be pursuing the money. Steel and Morris went on to challenge UK libel laws in the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the lack of access to legal aid and the heavy burden of proof that lay with them, as the defendants' requirement to prove their claims under UK law was a breach of the right to a fair trial and freedom of expression. The court ruled in their favour and the UK Government was forced to introduce legislation to change defamation laws.
caption: An anti-McDonald's leafletting campaign in front of the McDonald's restaurant in Leicester Square, London, during the European Social Forum season, 2004-10-16.
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