Rehana Azib explains why 2009 has been a bad year for defendants
There has been a flurry of recent asbestos exposure related cases providing largely good news for claimants in the context of the burden of proving causation and risk.
In Diane Willmore v Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council [2009] EWCA Civ 1211, [2009] All ER (D) 209 (Nov) the Court of Appeal was asked to address the questions of the burden of proof a claimant must surmount in order to establish material or substantial contribution to the risk of harm. It was held that there was no such thing as a safe dose of asbestos and therefore it was insufficient to eliminate one source of exposure to asbestos if another remained.
The circumstances of asbestos exposure in this case are unusual in that they do not involve exposure in the course of employment. The claimant was a former pupil of the defendant local authority school. There were three circumstances in which the trial judge had found that the claimant had been exposed to a risk from asbestos fibres, namely:
l from work done to a ceiling in
