Court rejects $53m class action over Hendra vaccine

The federal court has dismissed a $53m class action brought against the manufacturer of a Hendra virus vaccine that has been administered to half a million horses.

A horse is checked for Hendra virus in 2008.

The Federal Court has dismissed a $53m class action brought against the manufacturer of a Hendra virus vaccine that has been administered to half a million horses.

Horse owners throughout Australia have closely followed the case, which came to an end on Tuesday when Justice Steven Rares ruled there was insufficient evidence to say the vaccine, developed by a former subsidiary of Pfizer, was responsible for the deaths of horses.

The lead claimant, stockwoman Rachel Abbott, had alleged the Zoetis Australia vaccine killed her prized mare, Primetime, shortly after it was vaccinated in 2014.

She claimed Zoetis had been “misleading” in its statement that the vaccine, known as Equivac HeV, produced “no serious side effects”. But the court rejected that assertion and ruled against the claim for damages for the loss of horses, veterinary costs and associated income.

“The expert evidence that I have accepted does not support such a conclusion and the likelihood of inaccuracy and incompleteness in the various untested documentary records of other persons’ reports in evidence leaves too many uncertainties to enable me to find with any feeling of persuasion that the vaccine caused, or was a cause of, any serious side effect,” Justice Rares said in his judgment.

LHD Lawyers, which represented Ms Abbott, estimated 1500 horses had experienced adverse reactions to the virus, some resulting in death, and that the claim for damages from affected horse owners could total $53m.

Hendra virus was named after the Brisbane suburb in which it was detected in 1994 and has since killed more than 100 horses in Australia. It is believed that horses contract the virus after drinking water or food contaminated with flying fox excretions.

The zoonotic virus can also be transferred from horses to people who come into contact with an infected horse’s bodily fluids.

Four people in Australia have dies after being infected.

The virus has a mortality rate of about 75 per cent in horses and 60 per cent in humans.

The vaccine for horses was developed in 2012 and has proved to be effective. A 2017 survey by research journal Plos One found that 57 per cent of Queensland horse owners had vaccinated their horses against the virus.

Governments and horse sport organisations have widely encouraged, and in some cases mandated, horses to be vaccinated.

The most recent case of the virus was detected in a horse in Mackay, Central Queensland, in June.

Ms Abbott also claimed that Zoetis had overstated the “widespread risk” of horses contracting the virus throughout Australia.

She argued that most cases had been confined to tropical or subtropical areas east of the Great Dividing Range.

Justice Rares found the company’s fact sheets did not overstate the risk and had explained “in a balanced way” the prevalence of the virus and the consequences of infection.