Full Compensation Hope for Asbestos Victims

Exposure to asbestos is the greatest single cause of workplace deaths in the UK.

 

The House of Lords recently ruled that where a worker contracts mesothelioma after having been exposed to asbestos by more than one employer, responsibility for the damages payable should be apportioned amongst all those responsible, according to the degree to which they contributed to the chance of the worker contracting the disease. The judgment was made in the joined cases of Barker v Corus (UK) plc, Murray v British Shipbuilders (Hydrodynamics) Ltd. & others and Patterson v Smiths Dock Ltd. & another.

 

The decision would mean that victims of mesothelioma would not receive full compensation unless they were to sue all the employers who had exposed them to asbestos fibres. As mesothelioma can take 40 years to develop, it can be very difficult to trace the insurers of those former employers that have ceased to trade and in some cases the former employer may not have carried insurance.

 

The decision was criticised by the TUC, the GMB union and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers as failing to give justice to victims of the cancer and their families.

 

The Government has now announced its intention to amend the Compensation Bill to introduce measures which will effectively reverse the House of Lords ruling.

 

Information and guidance on asbestos in the workplace can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/.