Asbestos Damages Claim

Teresa Maguire V (1) Harland & Wolff Plc (2) Harland & Wolff Holdings Plc (2004)

It was reasonably foreseeable to the employer of a boilermaker in the period 1961-65 that the boilermaker's wife was at risk of serious injury to her health as a result of exposure to asbestos dust carried home each day on her husband's work clothes.

The claimant (M) sought damages from the defendants (H) for mesothelioma. From 1961 to 1965 M's husband (J) worked as a boilermaker at H's shipyard, where he was exposed to asbestos. H accepted that they were in breach of a duty owed to J in exposing him to the risks attendant to the inhalation of asbestos dust.

M argued that H breached a duty owed to her to take reasonable care not to expose her to the risk of injury to her health consequent to exposure to asbestos dust brought home each working day by her husband. The joint statement of the consultant physicians agreed that M was suffering from mesothelioma as a result of domestic exposure from J's clothes. H submitted that it was not foreseeable that M was at risk of injury in light of the amount and frequency of her exposure to asbestos dust and the state of actual, or imputed, knowledge of the risk in the period 1961-65.

HELD: The risk of serious injury to M's health was reasonably foreseeable and should have been foreseen by H in the period 1961-65. Prophetic vision was not required to foresee that employee's wives, in the typical position of M, would be exposed to considerable quantities of asbestos dust each working day when their husbands returned from work or that such wives would be exposed to substantial quantities of asbestos dust when brushing down, shaking or washing their husband's clothes.

The attendant risks of serious injury to health were well known by that time even if substantially ignored by shipbuilders such as H. H never bothered to consider the risks to wives of boilermakers and other employees exposed to asbestos. H took no steps to safeguard M or her husband from the risk.

Judgment for claimant.

Negligence - Health - Personal Injury

QBD (Manchester) (Morland J) 26/3/2004

LTL 6/4/2004 (Unreported elsewhere)

Document No.: AC0108110