Asbestos victims await result of nine-week legal test case (From The Northern Echo)

Asbestos victims await result of nine-week legal test case

2:03am Wednesday 4th June 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

A LANDMARK legal battle into whether insurance companies should pay compensation in asbestos-related cancer cases has begun at the High Court.

Families of mesothelioma victims in the North hope the nine-week test case will settle a debate over when an insurer's liability begins.

Thousands of families of workers who have died, and others who may contract the disease in the future, are awaiting the outcome of the case, which may go all the way to the House of Lords before it is decided. About 2,000 people a year are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the UK.

Only one of six leading the test cases, the family of steel erector Charles O'Farrell, who died in 2003, has won a court judgement, in which the family was awarded £152,000.

But Excess Insurance, which insured Mr O'Farrell's now-defunct employer Humphreys and Glasgow, is refusing to pay up before the courts have ruled on the legal issues.

Insurers had for many years paid compensation for the fatal lung disease mesothelioma on the basis that their liability arose at the time when a worker was exposed to asbestos dust.

But the Court of Appeal ruled two years ago in a different legal context that liability begins when the disease develops - sometimes after 40 years or more.

Roger Maddocks, of law firm Irwin Mitchell, in Newcastle, said the outcome of the case would be a landmark ruling.

He said: "When someone suffers an injury at work such as a fall, it is easy to identify when it happened and who or what was responsible. In a mesothelioma case, where the illness may not show itself until many years after exposure to asbestos, it is not so easy.

"In essence, some insurance companies are trying to suggest that, due to the wording of the insurance policies they sold, they should not be responsible for paying any compensation for the disease, purely due to the fact that it did not develop until years after the negligent exposure occurred.

"Employers in industry have known the dangers of exposure to asbestos dust since the early part of the last century.

"Insurance companies also knew the risks. For years they were happy to receive payment in the form of premiums from the employers, but now they are desperately, and disgracefully, trying to avoid meeting their responsibilities."