Very much in agreement, C. Edwards.
Question is why the McCanns haven't addressed any of these questions or provided any real evidence for anything now they finally have their day in court. It's baffling.
Is there some aspect of Portuguese law that they are relying on in presenting their case that obviates the need for these considerations? Perhaps one of our Portuguese friends can help us out here?
There is of course the possibility that the evidence is being provided but not recorded. However having seen some references from the judge asking for evidence it would perhaps appear not.
Another related point - Gerry McCann saying that he and Kate of all people should know how the search has been affected. With respect, I don't see how this follows logically. So far via their witnesses in court or even prior to that online they appear unable to establish just what "the search" is. They cannot possibly expect to be able to demonstrate that an undefined "something" has been damaged, they would need to directly specify "the search" and then empirically define just how Amaral's book has damaged it. Then if they managed that, they'd need to demonstrate just why they see themselves as arbiters of this nebulous search and are therefore entitled to compensation for said damage.
Personally I see them on somewhat sticky ground there. Their failure to take part (beyond some confused reports about where Gerry may or may not have been) in the easily-defined physical search for Madeleine on the night of her disappearance doesn't exactly put them forward as having any kind of ownership of the earliest definable search and beyond that they've just seemed to sit back and make poor decision after poor decision on how to spend the fund money with a whole raft of undesirables and, frankly, con merchants engaged to carry out "a search". What were they doing? Pounding the streets? Calling people? If I'd been the McCanns I'd have been insisting on a whole lot of paperwork proving the diligences being carried out on their behalf for lots of money so that I had some kind of record of what had been going on. If they do have this kind of record, they haven't appeared to put it forward to the court just yet.
Furthermore it's a question of defining "by how much" the search if, indeed, "the search" can be defined has been damaged. Would they have expected more people to have called in far-fetched sightings? How do they quantify this? They'd need to do a MASSIVE survey - world-wide - and try and establish whether people had a) heard of Amaral's book, b) read it and c) stopped searching because of it.
How many of you reading this have searched? I haven't. I never had the slightest inclination to, neither did I keep my eye open when out and about for blonde children that could be Madeleine (quite frankly if you're looking for a reluctant and/or sullen child at many family outing venues you'd be kept rather busy). I would hazard a guess that the huge majority of the world are not and never have been searching (after the initial physical search, of course) for Madeleine other than a few that probably mean well but are the kind that like their 15 minutes of fame in the Daily Mail. How do the McCanns prove that anyone that read Amaral's book didn't already share his conviction and weren't searching anyway?
The whole thing is a complete debacle. It's a nonsensical lawsuit. I understand the gist of the case and what they want to try to be seen to be achieving, but the law doesn't work on intentions, it works on solid cases and the McCanns, like Tony Bennet earlier this year, simply don't have one that I can see.
