Two activists convicted of libeling the U.S. fast-food chain McDonald’s after the longest court case in English legal history did not get a fair trial, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday.
Helen Steel and David Morris, whose 1984 pamphlet accused McDonald’s of starving the Third World, destroying rainforests and selling unhealthy food, were also deprived of their freedom of expression by their 1997 conviction, it said.
The Strasbourg-based court ordered Britain to pay them a total of 35,000 euros ($45,400) and offer them a retrial, it said. London has three months to appeal the decision.
In its ruling, the court said the denial of state legal aid to the defendants, a part-time barmaid and an unemployed single father, had skewed the case from the start.
“The denial of legal aid to the applicants had deprived them of the opportunity to present their case effectively before the court and contributed to an unacceptable inequality of arms with McDonald’s,” it wrote.
The ruling also argued there was “a strong public interest in enabling such groups and individuals outside the mainstream to contribute to the public debate.”
The original decision had rejected the idea the activists enjoyed the same freedom of expression as journalists.
The original “McLibel” trial was the longest in English legal history, running for 313 days of testimony, eight weeks of closing speeches and six months of deliberation. There has been a longer trial under Scottish law.
