Mesothelioma: Hospice wins landmark victory in asbestos cancer case

 

This article titled “Mesothelioma: Hospice wins landmark victory in asbestos cancer case” was written by Mark Gould, for The Observer on Saturday 28th August 2010 23.06 UTC

Hospices that care for victims of a form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure hope to get help with treatment costs following a landmark court ruling.

After a three-year legal battle the high court has ruled that a company that exposed a former worker, who later died of mesothelioma, to asbestos should pay for part of his hospice care.

The ruling is a major boost to hospices, which rely for much of their funding on charitable donations.

Engineering firm Foster Wheeler must pay £10,000 to St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, east London, for the care of James Willson, who died there in 2007 aged 76 after being exposed to asbestos at Deptford power station in the 1950s.

A bed at St Joseph’s costs around £900 a day, 35% of which the NHS pays for. As the rest comes from charity, St Joseph’s lawyers argued that companies or their insurers should be liable.

The ruling could lead to thousands of claims from hospices, with mesothelioma cases set to peak at over 2,450 a year in the next decade.

Music impresario Malcolm McLaren was a recent victim, but the disease is usually associated with former workers at power stations, shipyards and building sites, where asbestos was prevalent as insulation and a fire-retardant.

Symptoms of the incurable disease, such as shortness of breath and chest pain, may not appear until 50 years after exposure. Many people die within a year of diagnosis.

Hospice social worker Roy Nightingale, who played a key role in the court victory, 10 years ago began helping mesothelioma victims – people with an illness he saw as often caused by employer negligence.

The catchment area for St Joseph’s, where Nightingale works, is a mesothelioma hotspot – its catchment area has the third highest incidence of the disease among women in the UK. This is due in part to its proximity to the Ford car plant in Dagenham, Essex, where workers were exposed to asbestos in brake parts, and Cape, an asbestos cutting factory in the 1960s.

He has helped secure millions of pounds in compensation and benefits for families affected by mesothelioma. Depending on the age of the claimant payouts can be anything between £50,000 and £400,000.

And Nightingale supports families through the coroner’s inquest – a legal requirement for mesothelioma deaths. He has even been best man at deathbed marriages to ensure long-term partners inherit benefits and compensation.

Nightingale set up a “special interest group” of medical experts, nurses and solicitors to help former industrial workers who did not know their rights and needed support.

Every week Nightingale deals with five or six mesothelioma patients, all elderly working class men and women.

Among them was a demolition worker who was diagnosed late and given weeks to live, making it vital to track down his former employers: “He kept on repeating the same phrase – people thought it was his illness – but I realised it was the slogan of a well-known demolition firm.”

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