Although Tiger Brands’ liability for the listeriosis outbreak in 2017/18 has yet to be determined in court, the company has agreed to settle certain claims in the long-running class action lawsuit linked to its now-closed Enterprise Foods facility in Polokwane, Limpopo.
Seven years after South Africa experienced the largest documented listeriosis outbreak in history, resulting in more than 1 000 infections and 218 deaths, Tiger Brands says that the attorneys representing its lead reinsurer, QBE Insurance Group Limited, have presented a settlement offer to the plaintiffs’ attorneys as part of a “road-map to a possible overall resolution of the listeriosis class action”, reports Daily Maverick.
“The settlement offer includes an undertaking to pay the claimants’ proven or agreed compensatory damages in terms of section 61 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008,” said the company’s statement.
“The offer is subject to certain conditions and has been made without admission of liability and in full and final settlement of the claims of the claimants.”
The listeriosis outbreak in 2017/18 was linked to contaminated polony produced an Enterprise Foods factory in Polokwane. Tiger Brands was the parent organisation for Enterprise Foods.
QBE Insurance Group has authorised settlement offers to the following groups of claimants who suffered from the outbreak caused by the sequence type 6 (ST6) strain of Listeria monocytogenes:
• Claimants who contracted (or whose mothers contracted) listeriosis caused by ST6;
• Claimants whose legal breadwinners, on whom they were legally dependent, died of listeriosis caused by ST6; and
• Claimants whose legal dependants, who were in their care, contracted listeriosis caused by ST6.
The announcement “follows on measures already taken in February 2025 to offer interim relief in the form of advance payments to identified claimants with urgent medical needs”, said Tjaart Kruger, CEO of Tiger Brands.
The next steps involve the offer being conveyed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys to “those claimants who qualify”, before damages of those who accept the offer will be quantified, which could take several weeks.
Long legal road
In September 2024, the plaintiffs’ legal team said they had received two important pieces of evidence from the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS).
The first was confirmation that the strain responsible for the outbreak, the sequence type 6 strain, was not found in any other facility or location apart from the facility in Polokwane.
In January 2024, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), also provided public access to DNA sequence data for 403 ST6 isolates (a culture of micro-organisms isolated for study) from the listeriosis outbreak.
The isolates were derived from samples collected from human patients, food products and the environment at the Polokwane factory; sequenced by the NICD; and analysed by several methods, including multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and core genome MLST.
Core genome MLST analysis showed that about 382 of the 403 ST6 isolates had no more than four allelic differences, meaning they were closely related and shared a common origin.
On Monday, the legal team representing the class action claimants – made up of Richard Spoor Inc Attorneys and LHL Attorneys – released a statement welcoming Tiger Brands’ “effective admission of liability”.
In February, a joint statement had been released by Tiger Brands, Richard Spoor Inc and LHL Attorneys, announcing that a limited number of claimants would receive interim financial relief. These were people who had applied for urgent medical assistance while the legal action process continued.
The attorneys noted that while the agreement to settle represented a breakthrough, challenges remained in identifying additional victims of the outbreak, many of whom had not yet come forward and therefore had not been identified or located.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Finally, first payments agreed for listeriosis victims
Tiger Brands in talks to pay urgent listeriosis medical bills
Listeriosis victims still awaiting justice
Tiger Brands’ listeriosis victims in legal limbo for 3 years