About me

I was a partner with John Pickering & Partners between 1984  and 2005. I specialized in asbestos related disease.

In 2002 I led the team of solicitors that preserved the entitlement to compensation of most mesothelioma victims.

Between 1999 and 2003 I was one of the solicitors in the group action brought on behalf of South African asbestos miners.

Swaziland

In 2005 I set up my own firm dealing only with mesothelioma claims.

Since then, I have settled or won many claims. I have not lost a case.

Compensation has ranged from £100,000 to £575,000. 

Most awards or settlements are in the bracket £100,000.00 to £200,000.00.

Clients have been building workers, engineers, marine engineers, fitters, railway workers, local authority workers, plumbers, heating engineers, joiners, carpenters, electricians, power station workers, laggers, chemical plant workers, and government employees.

I have taken on a limited number of cases at any time in order to complete them within 3 to 9 months. The key is to start court action quickly. I have used the "fast track" mesothelioma procedure now operated by Senior Master Whitaker and Master Eastman in London, which has been extremely helpful to victims and their families in speeding up the payment of compensation. My experience is that insurers and employers will not settle cases properly unless court action is pursued quickly.  Most cases will then be settled or won.

In between 1 in 10 and 1 in 15 cases, the employer has gone out of business, and their insurers cannot be found.  Insurance has been compulsory since 1972. Most employers had insurance before that. There are no central records, and many of the records have been destroyed or lost. Although people who cannot bring court action are paid lump sums under a government scheme, the amounts are much smaller than if court action was possible.  A fund is needed to compensate these people.

 

Case studies

George Cahill v Manchester City Council

Between 1966 and 1970 George was employed at the Manchester City Parks Department based at the Heaton Park Workshops, Heaton Park, Manchester. “During every day that I spent working on vehicles I came into contact with brakes. This involved taking the wheels off the vehicle, the drums, inspecting the brakes, checking the rubbers for fluid leaks and if the brakes were worn, putting new brake shoes in… I used a compressed air pipe to blow out the dirt and debris. I also used the compressed air pipe to blow out the brake drum. This was the accepted way of doing it.”   This was his only known asbestos exposure.

His case was settled for £135,000.00.

 

Cynthia Vickers v BBA Group

Jeff Vickers was born in 1936. From July 1951 to June 1957 he worked for British Belting and Asbestos (BBA) in Cleckheaton Yorkshire as an apprentice general electrical engineer in the installation and maintenance of equipment, including motors and control gear, switches, fuses and cables, temperature control, lighting including flameproof fittings, power factor improvement equipment. BBA (British Belting and Asbestos) was, with T&N and Cape, one of the “Big 3” UK asbestos producers, who formed the Asbestosis Research Council. The factory and the machinery were full of asbestos dust. Carding, spinning and weaving of asbestos was carried out, as a result of which the general atmosphere of the factory was very dusty.  Jeff ended his career as managing director of the photography company Ilford (UK), from which he had retired in 1996. The case settled for £400,000.00.

Ernest Holt v Hardmans   

Ernest Holt was born in 1930. He said: - “I began my apprenticeship in 1945 as a joiner… I remember my dad telling me “get into there and you will be right for life”… As a joiner it was my duty to maintain the fabric of the mill buildings. I was involved in all types of joinery work: roofing, building and fitting wooden frames for windows, doors and stud partitioning. I was involved in extensive alterations within the factory. This involved demolishing old walls and replacing with new offices, rooms and corridors. …A lot of my repair work involved the use of asbestos. I used corrugated asbestos cement sheet for roofing. I also used a material called Asbestolux. Asbestolux sheeting was used everywhere within the mill. …Cutting the asbestos boards with this (power) saw created massive clouds of dust. We were paddled in the stuff. When this board was cut with an electric saw dust hung in the air for hours…After a day’s work the waste dust would be ½ inch to 1 inch thick on the floor around the trestles.”

His case settled for £90,000, which gave credit for £10,691 he had received under the 1979 Act.

 

Edwin Matthews v British Uralite

Eddie Matthews developed mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos with several employers. The insurers of his employers argued that because in theory mesothelioma can be caused by a single asbestos fibre, it was not possible to say which employer had caused Mr Matthews’ disease, and therefore none of them were to blame legally. Mr Matthews won his case in the High Court but the insurers took it to the Court of Appeal, where he lost. I led the team of solicitors that took his case and Doreen Fox’s case to the House of Lords in July 2002, where they won. The Law Lords decided that any employer that materially increased the risk of one of their workers developing mesothelioma was legally responsible to compensate the victim. Had the case been lost, most mesothelioma victims would have lost their right to be compensated by the courts, because most asbestos workers have been exposed to asbestos by more than one employer. Mr Matthews was awarded £155,000.00. He was a brave man with great dignity, who was willing to speak to the media during the progress of his case in spite of being in pain, in order to highlight the issue affecting hundreds of other victims.

 

Afrika and others v Cape plc

I acted for 2,200 of the 7,500 South African asbestos miners and residents who sued the British company Cape plc. I worked on the case between 1999 and 2003 with Richard Meeran, of Leigh Day & Co., who had started the case. The workers and residents had been exposed to blue and brown asbestos in South Africa by subsidiaries of Cape plc, but brought the court action against the UK parent company Cape plc. For several years Cape plc tried to have the cases sent to South Africa. In Summer 2000 the House of Lords decided that the cases should proceed in London. This led to settlement of the action by Cape and another company Gencor in March 2003 for £10.5 million. Many of the clients had developed mesothelioma. In Prieska, where Cape plc operated a series of mills to extract the asbestos fibre from the ore, families who had never worked with asbestos developed mesothelioma.

Asbestos Street, Prieska.

Copyright © Anthony Coombs 2006