Porton Down, the Group Litigation. A long crusade for justice.

01/09/2008

By Jonathan Herbert, Legal Executive in Chemical Poisoning & Asbestos.

At long last the Porton Down Veterans are celebrating a victory upon a successful completion of their chemical warfare litigation. The case against the Ministry of Defence has been handled by Alan Care since 1994.

Porton Down - A brief history

Porton Down in Wiltshire was established by the War Department as an experimental base in 1916 for British research into the use of offensive and defensive chemical warfare, in response to the use by the German military of mustard and lewisite gas during the ongoing First World War. From 1940 (during the Second World War) it also became the centre of British interest in biological warfare. Armed Forces servicemen went to Porton Down to take part in non-therapeutic experiments. It is said that 20,000 servicemen attended in this way in total over the years.

The Porton Down Veterans Support Group

Following allegations by some veterans of being “duped” into attending primarily during the 1950s, but continuing into the 1960/70s and even the 1980s, the Ministry of Defence set up the Porton Down Helpline. Also, at about the same time, Wiltshire Police set up their “Operation Antler” which resulted in about 1,000 enquiries but no criminal prosecutions. Soon after that, the Porton Down Veterans Support Group was established. It is worth mentioning that in 1959 a Ministry official who was apparently somewhat concerned about the recruitment methods for securing servicemen to attend Porton Down had said: “If we tell them that the experiments could be lethal there would inevitably be a sharp fall off in numbers, and probably a degree of embarrassing publicity. On the other hand, if no more warning of the danger is given than at present, we may be quite rightly accused of deliberate misinterpretation in the future.”

Allegations

The veterans' allegations certainly had merit. The first and most widely-reported incident related to Ronald Maddison who in 1953 had been given an ‘uncontrollably dangerous' 200mgs dose of the odourless and colourless nerve agent Sarin resulting in his death within an hour. The initial inquest was held in secret and a verdict of misadventure (the modern meaning being suggestive of a lawful human act, which takes an unexpected turn and leads to death) was recorded.

Police, as part of “Operation Antler” reported their concerns about Ronald Maddison's original inquest to the Wiltshire and Swindon Coroner who applied successfully to the Lord Chief Justice to have the 1953 inquest verdict overturned. A new inquest was ordered. We represented Ronald Maddison's family in what was at the time the longest inquest in British legal history which concluded with the jury returning a different verdict, that of death by gross negligence manslaughter. Thereafter, we negotiated a settlement of the family's claim for compensation.

Claims of other veterans

Following this, attention focused on the many claims of the veterans, the majority of whom confirmed that they had been misled by notices at their units that were said to have been posted across all arms of the services. Some notices they said called for ‘volunteer/observers' for common cold research. Other servicemen however said they had been ordered to go to Porton Down. There were about 350 veterans seeking justice so we joined with another firm of solicitors, Leigh Day & Co, such was the magnitude of the litigation. The experiments carried out on the servicemen included:

• Mustard Gas.
• Nerve agents including Sarin variants GB and VX in both liquid and gas form.
• Incapacitating drugs including CS/Tear Gas in both forms and glycollates.
• Psychotropic drugs including LSD, BZ (quinuclidinyl benzilate) a substance that disrupts normal perceptual patterns, rendering someone completely out of touch with their environment.
• Other unnamed hallucinogens.

Settlement

We settled outside the group litigation certain claims for servicemen who had been given psychotropic and other un-named hallucinogenic drugs. We were not dealing with a uniform client base. What we had were a variety of chemical exposures with a variety of different symptoms. The servicemen wanted justice, an apology and expected compensation. Despite the fact that the claims were so wide-ranging, one beneficial feature was that we had a collection of level-headed ex-servicemen (or their next of kin) who were willing to accept the same level of compensation as each other, rather than embark upon a potentially costly and lengthy assessment of the value of each individual claim. With this, it became possible to negotiate globally for all of them. The advantages were speed, certainty, closure and a feeling of even-handedness; they were all equal.

The first wave of Porton Down veterans' claims were settled by the Ministry of Defence for £3,000,000 compensation in total plus their legal costs following a Mediation in January 2008. Of no less importance was the need for the veterans' treatment and suffering to be acknowledged. Part of the settlement included the giving of an apology in the House of Commons (as confirmed in Hansard). The Ministry of Defence's statement acknowledged that the long-suffering veterans had been ignored by government for all those years and may be seen as truly historic in that the UK Government has finally faced up to Cold War excesses. The veterans eventually got what they wanted.

The second wave of claims

This settlement was widely reported in the media. As a consequence, other former servicemen who had been unaware or not involved in the first group action made themselves known. We are now in the process in collating further information ready to present the second wave of claims. The Ministry of Defence will consider claims arising out of injuries caused by “volunteering or “observing” at Porton Down providing that they were notified of such claims by 30 June 2008, the final cut off date. We may well be reporting on a second class action in due course.