JOHANNESBURG - Embattled Tiger Brands lost 4.87 percent to trade at R350 a share in early trade on the JSE following news that Richard Spoor, the lawyer well-known for his litigation on behalf of thousands of mineworkers was consulting with US food and safety lawyer Bill Marler on a class action against the company following the listeriosis outbreak.
The food-borne disease has claimed 180 lives since January last year.
Juno Thomas, the head of the Centre for Enteric Diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said last week that the centre was confident that it had traced the outbreak of the deadly listeriosis to Tiger Brands’ Enterprise food factory in Polokwane.
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The class action did not bode well for Tiger Brands, analysts said.
Frank Kahumba, an analyst at Momentum Securities, said Thomas’s team were working around the clock since December to trace the source of the outbreak and conducted 109 interviews. “It seems therefore that there is very little doubt that Tiger Brands was responsible,” said Kahumba
Forensic investigator, Paul O’Sullivan, said today he planned to lay murder and attempted murder charges against a ‘multi-national corporation’ over the listeriosis outbreak.