Two staff reporters at the Indian American newspaper that has been widely credited with bringing the McDonald's french fries flap to national attention are primary plaintiffs in the new class action suit filed in California.

India-West journalists Vandana Makker and Bala Murali Krishna are two of the three plaintiffs named in the complaint filed in Alameda County in Northern California on May 18. The third plaintiff, Sunil Khemaney, is a resident of Ventura, California, near Los Angeles, and works in television and video production.

The three plaintiffs -- all fastidious vegetarians -- contacted Seattle-based lawyer Harish Bharti recently after they learned that McDonald's Corp had been using beef tallow to flavour its extremely popular side dish at restaurants in the US, while touting it as "cooked in 100 per cent vegetable oil".

Makker and Krishna received the same e-mail alert from a Jain news group as their colleague Viji Sundaram.

Sundaram's coverage of the controversy in India-West, perhaps the most prominent and well-read Indian-American publication on the West Coast, has been lauded for shining the spotlight on the potential abuse of public trust. It even earned a mention in a front-page article in The New York Times earlier this month.

So when the two reporters decided to join Bharti's California complaint [separate lawsuits are pending in the state of Washington and in Canada], any possible appearance of impropriety or prejudice in reporting the rapidly developing story was a thick topic of discussion in India-West's San Leandro newsroom.

Immediately, the staff decided to append an editor's note to Sundaram's May 4 story on the Seattle lawsuit, informing readers that some India-West employees might join another case in California.

"We needed to make that disclosure while covering or reporting any story on that subject," Krishna told rediff.com this week. "We owed that to our readers and as a responsible publication that's the right thing to do."

The issue was never a full-blown dilemma, he stressed, since neither he nor Makker had or would have anything to do with India-West reporting on the subject.

"Whoever is a party to this lawsuit will not report the story, will not write or edit the story even if it is written by somebody else, and the decision as to where in the newspaper it is published -- that will not be taken by us and we will not even be consulted or know about it," Krishna, who has been on the staff of India-West since November, said.

"We did take these decisions at a meeting in a conscious fashion just to make sure that we do not have any conflict of interest or any unconscious, subconscious prejudice," he added.

Both India-West journalists were selected by Bharti out of a pool of over 100 people in California who contacted the lawyer with their stories. Makker and Krishna said they consumed McDonald's french fries for years; their belief that it was a vegetarian product, they alleged, was bolstered by the repeated assurances of McDonald's employees.

Their consumer outrage turned litigious by chance.

"I was just kind of aware of Mr Bharti," said Makker, who joined India-West last July. "I knew he did [another] class action lawsuit with Boeing. And then, I found out he was doing this McDonald's thing or was interested in doing something. So I just called him to get some information and then he faxed me information and I just kind of signed up."

Bharti, for his part, said there was no particular reason in choosing Makker and Krishna to be two of the three plaintiffs; the case is likely to be closely watched, and the most dangerous for McDonald's, given California's excellent consumer protection laws and history of awarding large punitive damage settlements

"You cannot put every person in the [initial] complaint," Bharti explained. "I just decided to put these three in for no particular reason. There could be other plaintiffs in there. They don't have a stronger case than anyone else."

After a moment's reflection, he added: "I wanted people who are well-informed and articulate. If I thought there was a problem, I wouldn't have done it. When it is time for a deposition, you need people who are like that."

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