HAEMOPHILIACS have welcomed a High Court ruling on hepatitis infection as a major step forward in their campaign for compensation and a public inquiry.

Payouts ranging from £10,000 to more than £200,000 were awarded yesterday to 114 people infected with hepatitis C through contaminated blood.

The court ruled that the public was entitled to expect clean blood, and anyone who caught the virus as a result of defective blood was entitled to compensation.

North-East haemophiliacs said the ruling would strengthen their efforts to win a public inquiry into the scandal, in which many of them were infected with hepatitis C through contaminated blood.

A spokesman for Haemophilia Action UK, who contracted the potentially deadly liver disease through blood products, said: "This could have implications for our case and it shows there is growing support.

"We should have the right to receive treatment that is not contaminated and we should expect the NHS to take reasonable precautions."

Lord Morris of Manchester, national president of the Haemophilia Society, said: "This is a landmark judgement of huge importance to thousands of other people who have been infected with Hepatitis C by NHS blood products."

The High Court ruling applied to patients who had contracted the virus since 1988, who are entitled under consumer protection laws to compensation for damage caused by a defective product.

Haemophiliac hepatitis sufferers, who largely contracted the virus before 1988, are fighting to overturn a legal waiver not to take action over hepatitis, introduced before they knew they had been infected.

Anthony Mallen, of Newcastle solicitors Deas Mallen, who led yesterday's litigation, said the ruling was a landmark decision for consumer rights.

He said: "Producers are not liable for risks which are genuinely unknown to exist, but as soon as the possibly dangerous nature of the product has been discovered they will be liable if they continue to supply dangerous products."

The bill for the damages awarded against the NHS could run into millions of pounds.