A fire protection company has been held liable for the destruction of a large confectionery plant after a fire ripped through the facility in 2005, it's emerged.

In a landmark High Court judgement delivered on 22 July, ADT Fire and Security was found liable for the damage caused to the Monkhill facility in Pontefract – then owned by Trebor Bassett Holdings Ltd – in June 2005. But the confectionery company was judged to have negligently contributed to the loss by failing to provide adequate fire separation and a sprinkler system, so the claim for £110 million in damages was reduced by 75% to £25 million.

The complex case included issues of conflicting terms and conditions, the appropriate design of a CO2 local suppression system, and the fire safety measures and procedures at the factory.

The judge, Mr Justice Coulson, held that the fire – which broke out in a hopper in the popcorn production area – was the sort of fire that the CO2 suppression system should have been designed to extinguish. The principal design failure, he said, was the type of fire assumed in the design and the type and location of the sensor in the hopper, which was slow to react.

However, he said the fire then spread as a result of releasing large quantities of burning popcorn from the bottom of the hopper onto the factory floor, which staff then attempted to stamp out according to the plant’s procedures. This caused a scattering of burning material across a wide area.

The case also featured conflicting evidence from the various expert witnesses called by both sides, who were unable to agree on many aspects of the fire and whose differences became quite heated during the case.

“As a result of all this floundering, the expert evidence was unfocused, and often unrelated to the real issues between the parties,” the judge said. “In a claim allegedly worth £110 million, I found this approach to expert evidence unsatisfactory and unhelpful.

“Bluntly, I have to say that experts appointed in civil litigation have no business to "fall out" and to fail to comply with the orders of the court. Experts are there to provide evidence on technical matters in order to assist the court, and for no other purpose. If they take matters of personal disagreement to such a level, they are failing to provide that service.”

Read the full judgement