TORONTO — Lawyers are headed to the Supreme Court in a final attempt to revive an $8-billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of Canadian cattle producers who were damaged by the BSE crisis of two decades ago.
An Ontario Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit two years ago, and the Ontario Court of Appeal denied an appeal of that dismissal on Jan. 31, 2024.
“We have instructions to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada,” Duncan Boswell, senior partner with Gowling WLG in Toronto and lead counsel in the suit, told Farmers Forum in a March email. As many as 100,000 people could benefit if they ultimately win the lawsuit.
The lawsuit blames the federal government for a BSE-infected cow that turned up in Alberta in 2003 because, years earlier, Canada allowed importation of cattle from Britain when that country was known to have BSE-infected animals. Consequently, the U.S. and other countries ruinously closed their borders to Canadian beef for years.
The legal odyssey dates back to 2005 when the original claims were heard in four provinces before the suit moved exclusively to Ontario court. In 2005, the U.S. allowed young Canadian cattle, under 30 months of age, back into its marketplace. Other countries shut out Canadian beef for much longer. It was only in 2023 that Japan finally reopened its market fully to Canadian beef.
Source : Farmersforum