{"id":459,"date":"2009-09-20T22:22:03","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T22:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2009\/09\/20\/a-mucky-business\/"},"modified":"2009-09-20T22:22:03","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T22:22:03","slug":"a-mucky-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2009\/09\/20\/a-mucky-business\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mucky Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unknown number of people \u201cmay have died\u201d from oil slops dumped around Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, in August 2006, according to a leader in last Thursday\u2019s Guardian<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Really? \u00a0How does that square with an admission by the claimants\u2019 lawyers a couple of days later that \u201cthe slops could at worst have caused a range of short-term low-level flu-like symptoms and anxiety\u201d?<\/p>\n

The London-based law firm Leigh Day represents 30,000 claimants who sued Trafigura, a leading oil trader, over the slops. As part of a settlement announced over the weekend<\/a>, the company has agreed to pay each claimant around \u00a3950 without any acceptance of liability. I explained the background to the case here<\/a> nearly a year ago.<\/p>\n

Surely the Guardian <\/em>would have known by last week that, in the joint statement announcing the settlement<\/a>, Leigh Day would accept that their experts had been \u201cunable to identify a link between exposure to the chemicals released from the slops and deaths, miscarriages, still births, birth defects, loss of visual acuity or other serious and chronic injuries\u201d attributed to the waste.<\/p>\n

Journalists who have written about the story over the past few days would surely also have known that Leigh Day were about to withdraw allegations that the slops had caused \u201ca number of deaths and miscarriages\u201d and that the law firm would admit that \u201cmany claims\u201d had been made for symptoms \u201cwhich are unconnected with any exposure to the slops\u201d.<\/p>\n

But I very much doubt if this will be the flavour of Monday\u2019s coverage. Instead, we can expect reports of Greenpeace calling on Trafigura to be prosecuted for manslaughter<\/a> <\/p>\n

On what evidence?<\/p>\n

Presumably it will be as shaky as the photograph of a woman with a scarred face that appears on this BBC Newsnight website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The implication is that she suffered the scarring as a result of exposure to hazardous waste. <\/p>\n

Dermatologists who have seen the photograph say this is lupus erythematosus , an auto-immune condition that could not have been caused in this way.<\/p>\n

I like and admire Martyn Day, the claimants\u2019 lawyer in this case. No doubt he \u2014 and the journalists I have implicitly criticised in this piece \u2014 will regard me as naive and credulous for reporting the \u201cother side\u201d of this case.<\/p>\n

I will leave readers to decide which journalists are being more one-sided.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n


\n\"\"Learning is a dangerous business<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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