Chinese courts are now ready to accept lawsuits by families of children sickened in last year’s tainted milk scandal, state media said yesterday, quoting a top official.
The report in the newspaper China Daily follows months of delays in which lawyers for plaintiffs said they were warned not to sue over the scandal, which embarrassed China by exposing chronic holes in food-safety mechanisms.
A senior judicial official said courts were now accepting cases from families who had rejected compensation offers from milk companies involved in the scandal, the newspaper said.
“A small number of the infant victims’ parents have not accepted the government-led compensation and have prepared pleas,” it quoted Shen Deyong (沈德詠), executive vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, as saying.
“The people’s courts [at various levels] have prepared for the work. They will accept the compensation cases according to the law,” Shen said.
At least six infants died and nearly 300,000 were sickened last year by milk powder contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine, which was added to milk supplies to give the appearance of a higher protein content.
A court in eastern China’s Shandong Province has accepted legal documents from 54 families whose infants developed urinary illnesses from baby milk powder made by Syrutra International Inc, a lawyer said.
“Before this, the court would accept no materials that we sent to them. The court would not reply to us or accept the lawsuit,” a Beijing-based lawyer in the case, Li Jinglin, said.
However, he said there was no guarantee the court in the city of Qingdao would take the case.
The company is a Sino-US joint venture, China Daily said.
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