Cape and the crusader

Is there a mineral more cruel than asbestos? Was there a political doctrine more cruel than apartheid? The mining of the most lethal variety of the first under the rigorous application of the second combined, over decades, in an unspeakably cruel public health disaster – the rain of dust of the title.

Not just the miners of crocidolite asbestos but their families and neighbours had their lives ended prematurely and agonisingly by asbestosis and pleural mesothelioma. Protective measures and healthcare were doled out according to race. For the ‘Bantu’ category, that meant almost nothing.

There was a further twist in the screw: in Britain the health risks of asbestos had been noted as early as 1898, with the first (admittedly feeble) legislation to ameliorate them passed in 1931. Yet South African producers, including the UK-owned Cape plc, carried on regardless, their denials in effect sweeping the medical evidence under the carpet.

This is the background to the nine-year legal case brought in the English courts by Richard Meeran (pictured) of claimant firm Leigh Day, brilliantly narrated for lay readers by David Kinley of Doughty Street Chambers. While the case’s landmark hearing in the House of Lords took place a quarter of a century ago, In a Rain of Dust could hardly be more topical.

For a start, the forum non conveniens arguments which filled much of the proceedings continue to be relevant in attempts to hold multinational companies to account in England and Wales. So, too, are questions around the funding of such claims, though the Cape litigation, controversially at the time, benefited from legal aid, a course not available now.

Finally, and most topically, the role of the lawyer identifying with clients. The ‘cab rank’ rule features just once in the story, when veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Sir Sydney Kentridge QC appears in the Court of Appeal – for Cape. No such rule applies to our hero solicitor Meeran, who last appeared in the Gazette’s pages in connection with potential litigation against Harrods over sexual abuse allegations. Readers may guess whose side he is on.

But what of the other practitioners in the story, those in South Africa and England acting for Cape? A chapter entitled ‘offensive lawyers’ portrays at least some of them as villains, among other things, for an unsuccessful attack on Meeran’s professional conduct in ‘decidedly heated’ proceedings. But in testing the claimants’ case thus, were the defendants not also doing their bit for justice? Like a good criminal advocate, can they not take comfort from the fact that their vigorous defence at least helped assure the safety of their client’s conviction?

Arguments over these matters will continue to rage. So will blue asbestos.

Michael Cross is news editor at the Law Society Gazette