Winning compensation for workplace injuries can require patience and tenacity but, as one High Court case showed, that is exactly what a good lawyer can offer you. After exhaustive detective work and evidence gathering, a woman whose father died of asbestos-related cancer was awarded £110,000 in compensation by a judge.
The man died aged 76 from mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer that is very nearly always associated with asbestos exposure but is notoriously slow to develop. After his daughter went to solicitors, they worked their way through his employment and tax records going back to the 1960s.
The fruits of their labour supported his account before he died that he had for three months worked as a pipe lagger’s mate in the boiler rooms of a hotel and a school in 1967 and 1968. He had described emptying bags of asbestos into a spraying machine and sweeping up asbestos dust at the end of each working day.
His employer at the time of exposure had long since ceased to exist and its insurer during the relevant period had fallen into insolvency. The latter, however, had entered into a scheme of arrangement that was approved by the High Court and the compensation would thus be payable to the man’s daughter, as executor of his estate, by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.