Some of the significant cases over the past year have included:
- Winning an award of £703,000 for the widow and family of a 52 year old partner in an engineering firm who died from mesothelioma following exposure to asbestos at work. This is amongst only a handful of awards exceeding £500,000 across England and Wales.
- Winning £100,000 damages (plus legal costs) for a retired teacher who developed mesothelioma by using drawing pins to pin children’s work to the walls of her prefab classroom, which contained asbestos.
- In a landmark case the firm recovered £12,500 for the value of hospice care as part of a £170,000 settlement for a man who worked with asbestos in 1963 and contracted mesothelioma in 2005. The funding of hospice care is almost exclusively by charitable donation and this is thought to be the first time a firm of solicitors has recovered the cost of care in this way.
- Fieldfisher acted for the family of a 75 year old man who died due to mesothelioma, and who used to take care of his grandchildren after school in term times. The defendants initially denied that this was compensatable, since there was no reported precedent for it, however the firm recovered £109,352 at a High Court hearing including £27,960 for the grandchildren’s care.
Our team of asbestos lawyers has also been actively lobbying the House of Commons, requesting that the Government overturn the House of Lords ruling that pleural plaques - a scarring of the lining of the lungs as a result of exposure to asbestos - is not a compensatable disease. The team also responded to the Ministry of Justice's consultation on the Law Lords' pleural plaques ruling.
Asbestos-related diseases affect thousands of people in the UK each year. Factory workers and labourers are amongst those who are commonly affected, but Fieldfisher have also acted on behalf of professionals such as doctors, nurses and teachers who have been exposed to asbestos through their work. Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP is a leader in the field of Asbestos Claims.
The Fieldfisher Asbestos Claims Team said: “We are delighted that in 2008 we were able to win over £16 million in compensation for the victims of these terrible diseases. It is crucial that sufferers and their families receive the compensation they deserve.”