Haulier wins 'toxic waste' claim case
Page 5
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• A Surrey haulage firm, wrongly accused of dumping toxic waste in the countryside, has won substantial damages from a national newspaper in London's High Court.
Alan Greenwood, who has depots in Kingston, Worcester Park and Chobharn, forced the Sunday Telegraph to admit it was wrong over allegations made in two articles in 1989. "This result is a victory for the haulage industry," he says.
Greenwood's counsel, Charles Gray QC, told the High Court: The thrust of the first article was that Mr Alan Greenwood had been guilty of illegally dumping in rural Surrey toxic waste contaminated with cyanide and cancer-causing agents. The second article ...accused Mr Greenwood of further illegal dumping on a large scale of toxic waste which his trucks should have taken to a special licensed tip in Bedford," Gray said the Sunday Telegraph now accepts the allegations were "without foundation" and had arisen after Greenwood was contracted to transport waste from the site of a gasworks. Some of the waste was contaminated and had to be dumped at a special tip in Bedford, This was "scrupulously" complied with, said Gray: only "clean inert waste — certified as uncontaminated" had been taken to a farm.
Greenwood says his business suffered as a result of the allegations with his fleet being slashed from 30 to 15.