Payouts May Be Limited To Infected Stock
UK - Farmers and other businesses which have been financially affected by the foot and mouth outbreaks were yesterday finding out whether they could sue the government or the drugs firm Merial over the millions of pounds a day they claim to have lost.
9 August 2007
1 minute read
"for other potential claimants the losses are likely all to be financial, so will be difficult to recover."
Stuart White
Now government investigators have said there is a "strong probability" that the two confirmed cases came from the Pirbright site in Surrey that houses the government's Institute for Animal Health, and Merial Animal Health, the way may be open to seek compensation.
But lawyers said yesterday that only farmers whose cattle had been directly affected by the virus might succeed in the courts, due to a legal precedent that followed a similar foot and mouth case close to the Pirbright laboratories in 1960.
In that case, a Guildford firm of auctioneers, whose business was disrupted as the government closed cattle markets, tried to sue the research lab and the government for negligence. But in a test case the high court ruled that only people whose cattle had been physically attacked by the virus had a rightful claim. The laboratory was not liable for the loss of other's business.
Stuart White, a partner with Reynolds Porter Chamberlain law firm, in London, said: "The owners of infected livestock would be in the best position to claim for their livestock and losses consequential on the infection, but for other potential claimants the losses are likely all to be financial, so will be difficult to recover."
