The widow of a retired painter and decorator who sadly died as a result of lung cancer just seven months following his diagnosis, is seeking justice from his employer who is believed to have failed to warn him of the risks which ultimately led to his asbestos related death.

We recently represented the widow of a man who worked as a boiler man in power stations from the mid 1960’s. His job involved maintaining and repairing boilers and removing lagging and refractory materials.

He also repaired pipes, valves and lagging and often worked in small, poorly ventilated and confined areas with no protection provided by his employer. Despite the areas he worked in being filled with asbestos, he was never provided with any warnings of the potential risks involved.

Asbestos is only harmful if disturbed and inhaled and in these circumstances our client’s husband had been exposed to significant quantities of the substance as his job often required him to cut and remove pipes disturbing the material along the way.

Our client came to us in his 70s having been diagnosed with the cancer mesothelioma. Several decades previously in the late 1960s to the late 1970s, he had worked as a demolition worker in a rubber factory in the Lancashire region where his work involved breaking apart cement roofs composed of asbestos.

In the course of his work he was subjected to significant quantities of the harmful substance, which was banned in 1999, as his employer had failed to both adequately ventilate the areas he worked in or to provide protective respirators.

With less than a year to live, we pursued his claim against two defendants the first of which alleged that he had been seconded for a period of time to the second defendant, something that our client did not recall.

It has become common for some asbestos claims to be defended on the basis that low exposure to the material did not create a foreseeable risk of injury. When we’re dealing with these types of claims, the defendants often argue that they did not breach their duty to the employee whose health has been significantly affected as a result.

Even in circumstances when we have evidence to prove that a client’s illness has in fact been caused by exposure to asbestos during the course of their employment several decades earlier, some defendants will rely on a guidance document called the Technical Data Note 13 (TDN 13) to avert responsibility.

Earlier this month, legal action brought by the Asbestos Victims Support Group resulted in the government deciding that individuals exposed to asbestos, and suffering the cancer mesothelioma as a result, would be exempt from paying newly introduced court fees in certain cases.

While on the face of it this appears a victory, and hailed a ‘landmark decision’, the reality is that only a minority of those affected by this serious illness will have the newly introduced court charges waived.

The support group argued that the fees were unfair to those affected by mesothelioma, and won, or so it seems, except for the fact that most meso sufferers will not be eligible for the exemption due to a relatively low threshold.