Supreme Court denies appeal of BSE class-action lawsuit

OTTAWA — An $8-billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of Canadian cattle producers quietly reached a dead end at the Supreme Court last fall, concluding a legal saga that began 20 years ago in the aftermath of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis.

The high court closed the final door on the lawsuit on Oct. 10 when it refused to hear an appeal that, if successful, could have revived the plaintiffs’ multi-billion-dollar case against the federal government.

An Ontario Superior Court judge had dismissed the lawsuit three years ago, and the Ontario Court of Appeal denied an appeal of that dismissal on Jan. 31, 2024. Duncan Boswell, senior partner with Gowling WLG in Toronto and lead counsel in the suit, then made the unsuccessful request for an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The class-action lawsuit by Alberta’s Flying E Ranche Ltd. stood to benefit as many as 100,000 Canadian producers in the event of a win.

The suit blamed the federal government for a BSE-infected cow that turned up in Alberta in 2003 because, years earlier, Canada negligently allowed importation of cattle from Britain when that country was known to have animals infected with BSE, or mad cow disease. Consequently, the U.S. and other countries ruinously closed their borders to Canadian beef as a result of the Alberta discovery.

The legal odyssey dates back to 2005 when the original claims were heard in four provinces before the suit moved exclusively to Ontario court. It was in 2005 that the U.S. allowed young Canadian cattle, under 30 months of age, back into its marketplace. Other countries shut out Canadian beef for much longer.