Appeals sought in milk case

The distraught families of 118 children who were poisoned during the tainted milk scandal are unhappy with their compensation offer and want to launch a class-action lawsuit against Sanlu and the other dairy producers.

The parents have signed a petition asking for their collective litigation to be accepted by any court within the country and for their legal fees to be waived.

"The compensation we could get is obviously unfair, and individual litigation has made many families like ours suffer even more," Li Xiaohong, whose child was sickened by the industrial chemical melamine, said yesterday. "The justice system is our last resort and the final frontier for impartiality."