When are insurers liable to compensate for mesothelioma?…The Supreme Court starts the trigger
Posted by Jeremy Horton on 8th December 2011
The Supreme Court has now started to hear an appeal to decide when insurance companies are responsible for paying compensation for mesothelioma.
It is hoped that the case will clarify a complicated area of the law relating to compensation and restore the right to compensation for many victims. It comes after a majority Court of Appeal ruling in October last year found that only certain claimants could sue for compensation over injuries sustained at work many years ago. The key question in the cases is what “triggers” the insurers’ liability to pay up under insurance policies arranged by the victim’s employers. The cases have therefore come to be known as “the trigger litigation” Appeals from six test cases will be heard by Supreme Court President Lord Phillips and four other Supreme Court Justices.
The Supreme Court judges have to decide whether employers are liable when their workers are exposed to asbestos or only when they start to develop the symptoms of mesothelioma caused by their exposure to asbestos.
The previous Court of Appeal decision made it more confusing for victims to work out whether they could receive compensation and for many it was “pot luck” as to whether they could, depending on the particular wording of the insurance policy.
The three Court of Appeal judges were unable to agree on a High Court ruling nearly two years earlier which found that employers’ insurers at the time of exposure were liable to pay out on claims for the fatal lung disease mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos in the workplace.
They ruled that in some cases, a company’s insurance providers should pay compensation at the onset of symptoms, which could be several decades later. In many cases by that time the employer has long gone into liquidation and there is no insurance policy, leaving the victim without anyone to pay compensation.
It is hoped the Supreme Court may be able to address this injustice for victims of such an awful and fatal disease as mesothelioma. If they cannot do so then Parliament may need to intervene.
