Court victory for asbestos victims

The Supreme Court has handed down a judgment which will affect many of the 2,500 people who are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year.

The highest court in the land upheld the Unite general union’s appeal and rejected arguments by insurance companies which would have denied compensation to victims of the terminal disease mesothelioma. The Supreme Court agreed with the union that the insurers of an employer at the time of the exposure to asbestos should pay compensation.

Unite appealed to the Supreme Court after insurance companies were partly successful in an earlier appeal to the Court of Appeal. The companies argued that in some cases the employers’ liability insurance is “triggered” not by the exposure to asbestos but by the development of the disease which is always decades later when there is no insurance in place to respond to the claim.

In his judgment, Lord Clarke concluded that: “The whole purpose of these policies was to insure employers against liability to their employees. That purpose would be frustrated if the insurers’ submissions on this point were accepted.”

Lord Phillips added that diseases are contracted when the process that leads to them is initiated as a result of wrongful exposure to the noxious substance that causes the disease.

The judgment went on to emphasise that these principles apply not only to mesothelioma but also to other industrial diseases.

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