Morris and Steel argued that they were already at a disadvantage, because they did not have access to expensive daily transcripts. Last year, the $30 billion corporate giant broke an agreement to provide each of the two defendants with a transcript of each day's testimony at its own expense for the remainder of the trial. To their dismay, the trial judge ruled that the activists had to begin closing arguments on October 21.

Against protests by Steel and Morris that they have not had adequate time to prepare for closing arguments, the trial is expected to end by New Year's. The pair had asked the court to have the corporation summarize its case first, so that they could offer rebuttal to McDonald's interpretations of the mountain of evidence and testimony.

The trial, which began in the summer of 1994, was originally expected to last a few weeks but has stretched beyond two years, with roughly 15 thousand pages of testimony from 180 witnesses. An additional 40,000 pages of evidence has been entered into the record.

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