David Pugh reports on a deeply unsatisfying statutory intervention
- The impact of the new Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 (Consequential Amendment of Companies Act 2006) Regulations 2018 on compensation for asbestos disease.
Compensation for asbestos disease continues to drive legal reform, many decades after the use of asbestos stopped in the UK. The latest statutory intervention comes with the new Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 (Consequential Amendment of Companies Act 2006) Regulations 2018.
As is often the way with asbestos, these regulations seek to resolve a problem caused by a solution to a different problem.
Latency period
The latency period between exposure to asbestos fibres and disease is normally around 30-40 years. Almost all asbestos claims are brought against former employers – but in reality their insurers. The latency period means that about half of those employers no longer exist. Under the 1930 Third Party Rights Against Insurers Act, an action can be brought directly against an insurer, but only after liability has been established against the insured company.
Where the employer is dissolved, means that claimants have
