Asbestos warning

Personal injury solicitors have backed government plans to provide asbestos victims with a financial safety net, but have warned that the buck stops with the House of Lords.Stephen Byers, secretary of state for transport, local government and the regions, announced last week that the government will extend the Pneumoconiosis (Workers Compensation) Act, which was designed to compensate sufferers of asbestos-related illnesses who could not recover damages, for example, because an employer had gone out of business.This will now also apply to situations where liability is in question.

The move follows the controversial Court of Appeal decision last year in the Fairchild case, which meant that where employees had been exposed to asbestos by more than one organisation and it could not be proved which was responsible, no compensation would be paid out (see [2001] Gazette, 14 December, 5).

But Frances McCarthy, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said what was really needed was a reversal of the Fairchild judgment by the House of Lords - set to hear the case in April - so that the taxpayer is not bearing the burden.

'The Court of Appeal decision was a licence for organisations to negligently expose people to deadly asbestos fibres and get away with it,' she argued.Ian McFall, head of the national asbestos team at Thompsons, which is acting on the appeal, added: 'If the House of Lords upholds the Court of Appeal's decision, we would want to see primary legislation which imposes liability on multiple defendants as concurrent tortfeasors.'Paula Rohan