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Asbestos ruling set to help thousands of claimants - Fairchild, Fox and Matthews
Posted: 15-07-2002

On 26th June 2002 the House of Lords made a landmark ruling. Where claimants can prove significant asbestos exposure with more than one defendant but cannot establish which of those defendants caused the disease – the claimant is now entitled to damages from any one of them.

The House of Lords decided that for a claimant to establish causation in asbestos exposure cases, it was sufficient to show that the negligence and/or breach of statutory duty of the defendant had caused a ‘material increase’ in the risk of an employee contracting the disease.

What does this mean?

Before the Fairchild case, victims of asbestos who had not been able to identify the employer responsible for the exposure to the "fatal fibre" which had caused their injury had been denied compensation.
Now, multiple defendants need to work together to decide on the ‘share basis’ of the claim (taking in to account periods of employment etc).

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