The plaintiffs are a collective of ninety seven fish farmers from the counties of Donghai and Ganyu in Jiangsu province and Linshu county in the Shandong province. Following several major pollution incidents of the biggest artificial reservoir in Jiangsu and of the main source of water in Lianyungang between 1999 and 2000, the plaintiffs demanded compensation from the State Environmental Protection Agency and from the Linshu county government. Following the refusal from those administrations to compensate them, the plaintiffs brought their case to the court by suing the two companies responsible for the pollution incident.

In first instance, the Lianyungang Intermediate People’s Court found that the causality link between the pollution of the water reserves and of the destruction of the fist livestock was established and condemned the two companies to compensate the loss of the plaintiffs.

This decision was upheld by the Jiangsu Higher People’s Court in 2003.

(Contribution: Case provided by Professor Tianbao QIN, Tang HE, and Han GAO, Research Institute of Environmental Law, Wuhan University, China)