There is No Known Level of Safe Exposure to Asbestos – High Court Ruling

Exposure to even very low levels of asbestos can be a source of tragedy many years in the future. The point was made by the case of a retired joiner who succumbed to asbestos-related cancer more than 50 years after he worked for just a few days on the construction of a flagship office…

Jun 08, 2023

During the late 1960s, the man worked on construction of an insurance company’s headquarters. The job lasted two weeks at most, but involved handling cement panels which contained asbestos. In 2019 he died, aged 83, from mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs almost always associated with asbestos exposure. His estate lodged a personal injury claim against the successor to a large construction company for which he was working at the time of exposure.

Upholding the claim, a judge found that, given its scale and extensive resources, the company should have been aware, even in the 1960s, that his work would give rise to a more than fanciful risk of asbestos-related injury. There was, however, no evidence that it had provided him with any advice or protective equipment or conducted a risk assessment of the dangers his work posed.

Although the level of the man’s exposure may have been low, it was measurable and not so insignificant that it could be regarded as trivial. Given the lack of evidence of any steps taken by the company to protect him, it could not reasonably have taken the view that there was a level of exposure below which there was no significant risk.

Overall, the judge could not rule out a significant possibility that his exposure on the building site was instrumental to him contracting the disease that killed him. The extent and duration of his exposure constituted a material increase to the risk of him contracting mesothelioma. The successor’s liability having been established, the compensation payable to the man’s estate was agreed at £107,500.

Was Restaurant Chef’s COVID-19 Redundancy Inevitable? Guideline Ruling

When employees are unfairly dismissed, it is commonplace for employers to assert that they would have lost their jobs in any event and that they have thus sustained no financial loss. As a case concerning a restaurant chef showed, however, such contentions are unlikely to be accepted in the absence of solid evidence. The chef was the most junior member of the restaurant’s 10-strong kitchen team of non-speciality chefs. Following a downturn in business arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, he was…

High Court Apportions Liability for Worker’s Construction Site Fall

Construction workers often do not have formal employment contracts and, in a world where contractors and subcontractors proliferate, it can be hard to tell where legal responsibility lies in the event of an accident. That was certainly so in a High Court case concerning a labourer who suffered catastrophic injuries in a workplace fall. The worker was engaged in building a mezzanine office at factory premises when he fell onto concrete, fracturing his skull. He suffered a severe brain injury,…

Providing Your Services Via a Company May Not Always Be a Good Idea

There can be advantages, both in terms of flexibility and tax efficiency, in providing your services via a private company. However, as an Employment Tribunal (ET) ruling showed, such arrangements may also have the less desirable effect of stripping you of any employment rights you might otherwise have had. A nurse who worked part time at a care home launched ET proceedings against its owner, alleging unfair constructive dismissal and that she had been subjected to racial discrimination and…