A middle-aged woman who was said to have contracted mesothelioma due to exposure to asbestos in a primary school playground when she was aged 10 has had her compensation hopes dashed.
It was the late 1970’s when the woman was exposed to asbestos when in the final year at primary school work started on the demolition of an adjoining Edwardian swimming pool. It was identified that those works threw up clouds of dust that settled in the playground and that that was the likely cause of her devastating illness.
The woman sued Salford City Council and the contractor who had carried out the demolition project. However, whilst expressing ‘considerable sympathy’ for her, the High Court dismissed her damages claim on the basis that her lawyers had failed to prove any causative link between her illness and the works.
The contractors also insisted that precautions had been taken to prevent dust escaping from the site and the court ruled that the chances of asbestos fibres being released into the atmosphere during the project were ‘minimal’. The whole area was being redeveloped at the time, with many houses being demolished, and the woman had acknowledged that dust on her clothes was ‘a fact of life’.
The court accepted that there was no evidence that the woman had been exposed to asbestos in the course of her various jobs since leaving school and that no other possible source of the exposure has been identified. However, it noted that asbestos was very widely used in Britain during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and that it was well known that ambient levels of the substance in the atmosphere are capable of causing mesothelioma over time.
If you have been exposed to asbestos in those times and have been diagnosed with Asbestosis in the last three years, then please get in touch with one of our claims teams about a possible claim for compensation. Call 0800 028 2060 24/7 or request a free call back and we will call you back when it is convenient with you.