whaleto

JULY 11 1999 CHRISTOPHER
BOOKER'S NOTEBOOK

Sheep dip victims in a legal labyrinth (July 11, 1999 Sunday
Telegraph?)

ONE night in June 1992, Gary Coomber, a Kent farmer, technically died.
After feeling ill for a week having dipped sheep in organo-phosphorus
chemicals, he had been taken to Maid-stone hospital where he fell into
a deep sleep. He woke to find his family round his bed, and was told
his heart had stopped.
Two years later, when Mr Coomber again fell seriously ill simply after
being in the presence of recently dipped sheep, he was referred to
Professor William McKenna of St George's Hospital, London, a heart
specialist of world standing. After carrying out tests and consulting
the scientific literature, Prof McKenna had no doubt that Mr Coomber's
heart condition, from which he might die at any time, was caused by
his exposure to OPs.
Prof McKenna was willing to testify to this effect in court. With the
support of other top-ranking medical experts, it seemed Mr Coomber had
as strong a case for compensation as any of hundreds of farmers who
believed their health had been irreparably damaged by exposure to
chemicals they had been forced to use by Government policy. He
therefore put his case against the manufacturers of the dip in the
hands of Leigh, Day, a law firm specialising in compensation cases.
Eventually his case passed to two other specialist firms: Dawbarns,
and Hodge, Jones and Allen. Four years after it started, after
spending untold time being seen by dozens of experts for both sides
and after his lawyers had spent £160,000 of legal aid compiling 70
lever-arch files of documents, Mr Coomber was told no more money was
forthcoming,.,, from the Legal Aid and that his case G-continue. He
has threatened with £700,000 from the defendants for what they spent
fighting his claim.
Mr Coomber is far from alone. Hundreds of alleged victims seeking
compensation for the results of OP poisoning in recent years have
found themselves lost in a bizarre legal labyrinth. So far only one
case has come to court. This resulted in agreed damages of-£50,000 to
the victim, all of which went to the lawyers in additional legal
expenses.
In January 1997 the Legal Aid Board decided that all cases involving
sheep dip victims should be covered by a generic contract, potentially
worth many millions of pounds, jointly awarded to a Norfolk law firm,
Dawbarns, with another in Plymouth, Wolferstans. In April 1998 Richard
Barr of Dawbarns moved, taking the contract with him, to a London
firm, Hodge, Jones and Allen.
Last year it was decided by the High Court that all sheep dip
compensation cases should be merged into one, embracing 68 potential
plaintiffs and a small army of defendants, including multinational
chemical companies and an array of Government departments. Last month
Master Miller in the High "ourt ruled that any other potential
plaintiffs should 'in their names to the action, asking for maximum
publicity to be given so the list could be complete by September. Two
weeks ago Richard Barr left Hodge, Jones and Allen, taking his part of
the legal aid contract with him. Peter Bright of Wolferstans confirms
that "more than 280 new names" have come forward.
Fresh edge is given to this ever more cumbersome case by the recent
Government-funded study which for the first time officially confirms
that a fifth of all farmers exposed to sheep dip suffer long-term
damage. But there are many features of this affair which inspire no
great optimism among the plaintiffs.
One is their lawyers' view that, thanks to an obscure decision by the
House of Lords in 1995, "claims against the Government will not
succeed as a matter of law". Another is the number of apparently
strong individual cases which have already been dropped from the list.
These include that of Polly Rees, who when she was 19 suffered serious
damage after being asked at the hunt kennels where she worked to rub
sheep dip into fleeces with her bare hands. Even though her case was
supported by the Health and Safety Executive, she has had to find
another legal firm to represent her.
What particularly surprises Mr Coomber was the quantity of seemingly
powerful evidence that was in the files when his case was abandoned.
This included a scientific paper on the relationship of OPs to heart
conditions which it was noted is "precisely in keeping with Mr
Coomber's experiences"; and a letter from a leading dip manufacturing
company confirming that as early as 1985 it already privately conceded
that contact with the fleeces of dipped sheep "constitutes a
significant and unacceptable hazard" for "several weeks after
dipping". Yet neither manufacturers nor the Government did anything to
warn farmers of precisely the problem which appears to have caused Mr
Coomber's own illness in 1994, and over which he has now been refused
any further funds to seek compensation. It is indeed a puzzling tale.