Personal Injury Claim News - pet shop worker has been awarded £700,000 in damages.
A former pet shop worker has been awarded £700,000 in compensation after being left wheelchair-bound through a virus he caught from a parrot.
Glyn Atherton, 35, made a personal injury claim and finally won a six-year battle for compensation after he contracted the rare condition psittacosis from an African grey called Jack.
Mr Atherton was working as an assistant manager at a branch of the Do It All chain of DIY shops in Nottingham when he was admitted to hospital with "flu-like symptoms". He returned to work briefly but spent a further six weeks in hospital where he was diagnosed with psittacosis, a form of pneumonia.
When the store was informed of his condition the parrot, which had been on sale in a pet section, had already died and a post mortem examination found it was a victim of the disease. The virus is believed to have been transmitted to Mr Atherton in dust from sand used in the parrot's litter.
He developed chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of the infection, which has left him unable to walk more than 20 yards or play with his 12-year-old daughter Nicole. Doctors have told him that his condition may never improve and he cannot work. His wife Sue, 36, has had to give up her £16,000-a-year job as a personal assistant to act as his full-time carer at their home in Chesterfield, Derbys.
The company, with which he had been employed for 10 years, reached an out-of-court settlement with his lawyers just before the case was to be heard by the High Court in Sheffield. Mr Atherton had been working as a £16,000-a-year assistant manager at the Bulwell branch for three months in 1999 and regularly walked past the parrot.
11 January 2007.Source: Daily Telegraph