Landmark ruling for asbestos victims

Thousands of victims of asbestos-related cancer and their families won a test case at the High Court yesterday which opens the way to the award of compensation running into millions of pounds.

The Unite union said it was a "hugely important victory" following a nine-week court hearing last summer. The cancer, mesothelioma, takes up to 40 years to develop and was diagnosed in 2,000 people last year. Tens of thousands more cases are expected to be diagnosed in coming years as all those exposed to asbestos as far back as the 1970s come to light.

The judge, Mr Justice Burton, ruled in six individual cases involving workers who developed the cancer, that insurers for their employers at the time they were exposed to asbestos must pay up.

The insurers had refused to pay following a Court of Appeal ruling two years ago in a different legal context. That liability was triggered when the disease actually developed, decades after the time of exposure.

Insurers had argued that they were not liable because the risk cover they provided was no longer in force at the time the workers developed the illness. Modern insurance policies have a clause excluding liability for asbestos-related disease.

Asbestos was widely used in many industries between 1950 and the early 1980s but was banned in 1999. Many if the employers involved have gone out of business and their insurers have become insolvent. In one test case, the family of Charles O'Farrell, who died from mesothelioma in 2003, won a court judgment for £152,000 in compensation. But Excess, which insured his since defunct employer, Humphreys and Glasgow, when he worked for it as a steel erector in the 1960s, had refused to pay up.

Excess said Mr O'Farrell's injury occurred not when he was exposed to asbestos in the 1960s, but when the cells in the lining of his lungs began to turn malignant. Medical evidence is that this happens roughly 10 years before symptoms appear. At that point, the company was no longer trading and was not covered by insurance.

The insurer argued in court that it was common sense to bring a claim at the time the cancer developed, rather than at the time of exposure because victims could have worked for several firms where they were exposed to asbestos.

Mr O'Farrell's daughter, Maureen Edwards, said yesterday: "My dad would have been proud that we have finally achieved justice for him, but he would have been disgusted by the lengths the insurers went to get out of paying."

Derek Simpson, the general-secretary of Unite, said it was a "hugely important victory for the victims of the deadly dust and for their families".

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