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Dangers lurking in our schools
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A recent high court decision for mesothelioma compensation was made in the case of Dianne Willmore v Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council (2009). In this case, the Claimant contracted mesothelioma as a result of being exposed to asbestos dust as a pupil at her local secondary school. It was alleged at trial that the Claimant had been exposed to asbestos after a newspaper article published in 2008 alerted her to the possibility of asbestos having been present throughout the school building. It was confirmed at trial that samples of the ceiling tiles within the school had been examined back in 2002 and were found to contain amosite, also known as “brown asbestos”. The Claimant alleged that she had been exposed to asbestos dust in various ways; when workmen had removed ceiling tiles in a corridor in order to undertake wiring work behind them, when the ceiling tiles had been removed, when the ceiling tiles in the toilets had been disturbed or damaged as a result of the Claimant’s fellow pupil's misbehaviour and when damaged tiles had been stored in the toilets. The Claimant also alleged that the ceiling tiles would become damaged when pupils bullied others in hiding their belongings behind them in the roof space. In order to receive compensation for mesothelioma, the local authority responsible for the school conceded that the Claimant would have to show that she came into contact with asbestos fibres with a degree of regularity. |
The judge in the case concluded that it was more likely than not that the ceiling tiles in the school building contained brown asbestos and that the Claimant had been exposed to asbestos fibres in the ways that were alleged.
As is always the case in a claim for mesothelioma compensation it was for the Claimant to show that the exposure she experienced at school “materially contributed” to the risk of her developing the condition.
It was held by the court that all of the different forms of exposure to asbestos fibres were not minimal in their nature and all types did materially contribute to the risk of her contracting mesothelioma. No specific measurement of the duration of the Claimant’s exposure was necessary. The local authority had admitted that it knew or ought to have known that any more than minimal exposure to asbestos dust was foreseeably hazardous to its pupils. It also did not dispute that if there had been a reasonably practical alternative that did not expose the pupils to dust, then it should have been used. There was no evidence that the work to the corridor ceiling was so urgent that it could not have been carried out at a time when pupils were not present. |
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Also, there must have been places to store the tiles other than in a busy corridor, and the risk of them being knocked and damaged there should have been obvious. It was also difficult to accept that the pupils' misbehaviour in hiding belongings above the ceiling was not known to staff. In any case the damage to the ceiling tiles would have been visible to the school authorities. Had they been alive to the risks from disturbed asbestos, they should have realised that the panels needed replacing, and with a safe material. Likewise, the damage to the ceiling tiles in the girls' toilets should have been detected and they should have been replaced with a non-asbestos product. It would have been readily foreseeable that ceiling tiles stacked in the toilets might be knocked and broken. Consequently, the situations which exposed the Claimant to a material risk of developing mesothelioma led to the council being found liable for her condition.
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The Defendant agreed to pay the Claimant a sum of £240,000.00 in compensation as a result of being diagnosed with the non-curable condition of mesothelioma. This recent decision raises alarm bells as it is feared that thousands of schools across the country have a legacy of asbestos materials within them. If such materials are disturbed as was the case in the Claimant’s action then there is, of course, a real risk of other children being exposed to harmful amounts of asbestos dust which could lead them to suffer with asbestos related illnesses in later life. |
