In one of the first legal cases of its kind, a British company is being taken to the High Court by victims of modern slavery seeking compensation for their alleged abuse and mistreatment. Six Lithuanian men are accusing Kent-based DJ Houghton Catching Services Limited (DJ Houghton), and the company’s director and secretary…of liability for trafficking the men and subjecting them to severe labour exploitation…They claim they were forced to work without a bed, a shower or adequate food on an almost continuous rota for days at a time, for which they were grossly underpaid. They were employed by DJ Houghton between 2008 and 2012 to catch birds in chicken houses and load them onto trucks bound for processing plants. The farms on which the men worked supplied chickens and free-range eggs…available in supermarkets across Britain…The claimants freed themselves from the abuse by escaping to a nearby Citizens Advice Bureau in August 2012…The case continues in the High Court, with a hearing scheduled for Tuesday 11 August 2015 to determine whether the Houghton defendants should be allowed to delay the litigation until 2016…