New law lets down asbestos victims
In the United Kingdom, a proposed law may affect workers' ability to receive compensation for industrial illnesses such as mesothelioma.
Currently, insurance liability forms must be retained on record for forty years. A new proposition suggests removing this requirement. Employees who face work-related illnesses may not be able to obtain liability records and will therefore be ineligible for compensation.
According to the president of the Association of Personal Injury lawyers, "Repeal of this regulation means that highly vulnerable people could be left without the means to obtain the compensation they need, and to which they are entitled."
A widow of a mesothelioma victim presented this argument: “[My husband] died without compensation because his employer’s insurance policies were not retained and his employer had ceased trading. For the Government to remove the duty on employers to retain insurance policies for 40 years is an insult to my late husband and to hundreds of asbestos victims and their families who have lost compensation. It is a disgrace.”