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03 May 2012 / Roger Harris
Issue: 7512 / Categories: Features , Personal injury
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Nuclear fallout

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Roger Harris follows the plight of personal injury claimants

The “atomic veterans” litigation reached its climax with the decision of the Supreme Court in AB & Others v Ministry of Defence [2012] UKSC 9, [2012] All ER (D) 108 (Mar). The claimants represented over 1,000 veteran servicemen who had been involved in thermonuclear tests carried out by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the South Pacific in the 1950s. Their case was that they had been exposed to radiation during the course of this testing and had subsequently developed injuries as a result of their exposure. Limitation was tried as a preliminary issue. There were issues both as to date of knowledge under s 14 of the Limitation Act 1980 and whether the court should exercise its discretion under s 33 of the Act.

Bizarre situation

The conundrum in AB was that the MoD maintained for the purposes of s 33 that the claimants’ case on causation was so weak that it had no real prospect of success, yet for the purposes

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