BEIJING: A Chinese court has started to hear the first civil lawsuit seeking compensation for last year's tainted milk scandal, state-run media reported today. A district court in Beijing yesterday began hearing a case filed by Ma Xuexin, whose 20-month-old son developed kidney stones after drinking "hundreds of packages" of the poisoned milk, the China Daily said. Ma is suing Sanlu Group, the dairy firm at the centre of the controversy, and a Beijing supermarket, where he bought the milk, for a total 55,184 yuan ($8,083). Several courts around the country have accepted compensation cases filed by parents of children who were sickened by the milk, but Ma's was the first to be heard in court, it said. The hearing started three days after China executed two men for their roles in the scandal which erupted just after the Beijing Olympic Games in August last year. Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping had been sentenced to death earlier this year by a court in the northern city of Shijiazhuang for producing and selling toxic ingredients that ended up in the infant milk powder.