Defending Asbestos and Other Industrial Disease Claims

Is your firm facing an asbestos disease, hearing loss or other industrial disease or accident claim? Are you unable to locate your liability insurers? Our specialist solicitors can help.

Historic asbestos disease and hearing loss claims can involve events occurring several decades ago. This may make it very difficult to trace the business’s liability insurers and even harder to find relevant documents or witnesses.

Despite those difficulties, asbestos and deafness loss compensation claims are often defendable with the help of experienced solicitors like ourselves.

Our team of experienced asbestos claims defence solicitors has a proven track record of success in defending businesses against industrial disease claims. We can help you:

• Trace liability insurers: We have extensive experience in tracing liability insurers, who have then met the costs of the claim.
• Defend claims in full: We can effectively defend your business against industrial disease claims, whether that’s getting the other side to drop their claim or fighting it to the court.
• Negotiate settlements: We aim to settle cases as early as possible and would not encourage you to run up costs of fighting a hearing loss or asbestos disease claim, unless we consider the claim is defensible at an economic cost.

Why are asbestos diseases still so common?

The incidence of asbestos diseases such as mesothelioma is still continuing at its peak level in the South East. Nationally, asbestos-related deaths are expected to continue at about 5,000 a year during the 2020s. This is despite the fact that the use of asbestos products virtually ceased by the early 1980s. Unfortunately, these diseases (and the claims that follow) generally do not develop until at least 20 years after the exposure that caused them.

Asbestos exposure in the South East

A lot of the older headlines were about asbestos exposure by government dockyard workers and newer headlines have concerned school teachers and pupils. However, many workers employed by private businesses in the South East region were also exposed to this material. This included:

• Central heating installers and plumbers
• Laggers and insulation engineers
• Building trades like carpenters, decorators and electricians
• Surveyors
• Boiler house operatives

Is there a defence?

Often there is no defence to an asbestos disease claim. In such cases, our solicitors will advise and assist you to settle the case as economically and quickly as possible. However, on occasion there may be a defence to such a claim, particularly in the following situations:

• Low-level exposure; especially in mesothelioma claims, sometimes the level of asbestos exposure causing the disease can be too low for the employer to be considered negligent at the time, especially before 1965.
• Causation; especially in lung cancer claims, the Claimant may fail to prove that his respiratory illness has been caused by asbestos exposure at all.
• Not your employee? The duties owed to employees and self-employed contractors can sometimes be quite different and there may be a defence if you can show the Claimant was genuinely not your employee.

Can we find your insurers?

A claim by a former employee for asbestos exposure or another type of industrial disease should be covered by the insurance company that you had in place at the time of the exposure, which is not necessarily the same insurer that you have in place now. As the exposure can be from many years previous, some insurance companies may have gone bust, or you may not have the records available to identify who your insurer was at that time.

Through our contacts within the insurance industry, our solicitors are often able to find insurers which the business cannot trace for themselves and so enabling the claim to be passed to your insurer. We have lots of experience of finding insurance companies where you may have previously not been able to. 

Get in touch with our experienced asbestos claims defence solicitors

If your business is facing an asbestos disease claim, contact one of our industrial disease defence solicitors, based in Maidstone and Canterbury, who are ready to help with any legal advice you may require.

To get started you can book a free 30 minute appointment with one of our friendly team. Alternatively, call us on 01622 690691 or fill out our online contact form.