Court dismisses food poisoning case against company

Dubai: A court has dismissed a case filed by a man against a multinational company for Dh4 million in compensation following his four-year-old daughter's illness after consuming its milk product.

The Dubai Court of Cassation decided that the company "was not at fault" and overturned the initial ruling, which ordered compensation to the national father, M.Z.

The judge said that the man failed to verify whether his daughter fell ill after consuming the company's milk product.

The judge also determined that "the sample of the milk product, which was sent to the laboratory for examination, could not have been in the same condition when the victim consumed it".

M.Z. was suing the company for moral, psychological and medical compensation. The child vomited several times and fell ill, prompting her father to admit her in a Sharjah hospital. Doctors said she suffered from food poisoning.

The company's lawyer Dr Habib Al Mulla said that his client has been selling its products for more than 130 years around the world without any consumer problems.

"All the municipality laboratories (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Directorate General of Municipalities) declared the soundness of the product and the subject matter batch code," he said.