Passive smoking victim whose court case changed the workplace environment Liesel Scholem b May 17, 1927 d October 24, 2018

Liesel Scholem, the first person in the world to get a court judgment for health damage caused by passive smoking in the workplace, has died aged 91. She was born Liesel Rothschild in Frankfurt, Germany. Her father Abraham Rothschild was a Jewish haberdasher. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews were segregated in schools and she was no longer able to mix with her school friends. Her father’s livelihood was destroyed by the Naziordered boycott of Jewish businesses.

In 1936 he left Germany, taking his family to South Africa. Liesel grew up there, married and had four children. She and her husband hated apartheid and did not want to be on the side of the oppressors and have their children grow up in such an environment.

They moved to Australia in 1961. When her marriage failed, she found full-time work at CSIRO and began studying part-time for a BA honours in psychology at Sydney University while bringing up her four children as a single mother.

On graduating in 1968 she started work as a psychologist for the NSW Department of Health, first at a psychiatric hospital and then at a community mental health centre. Smoking among the psychiatric patients and staff was rife and she did much group work in small rooms.

She enjoyed her work but her longstanding asthma was affected by the smoke. She wrote letters of complaint but smoking was the norm and her requests for people to refrain were ignored. By 1984 she was experiencing worse breathing problems and was diagnosed with emphysema.

Her initial claims for sick leave and medical expenses related to the emphysema were rejected. After she pursued this with the help of the Public Service Association her employer, which by then was the Family Court, agreed to pay her compensation as long as she did not pursue the matter in common law in the District Court.

But compensation would only cover her immediate expenses and by then she was anxious to establish the precedent that passive smoking was the cause of her problem.

Medical literature on this subject was plentiful, but no-one had ever proved the matter before a court.

The Public Service Association would only support her if she used its solicitor, who had not been very helpful, so she struck out alone in 1986, contacting the Non-Smokers’ Movement of Australia, which had been

She enjoyed her work but her longstanding asthma was affected by the smoke.

started by Brian McBride to help people suffering from smoking-caused problems.

She sued the NSW Health Department for passive smoking-related lung damage. They sent her to a large number of specialists to try to find one who would dispute the cause of her lung problems. In May 1992, the case came to the District Court. The Health Department could hardly claim they did not know the risks.

While the tobacco industry was not asked for help by the Health Department, they sent representatives to the court as the case proceeded. The defence barrister was very aggressive and tried to paint her as a venal fraud but Scholem held fast through gruelling days of cross-examination.

She was offered an out-of-court settlement but declined to accept, determined to get an official precedent-setting court judgment.

Finally, after a court case of almost a month, a four-person jury delivered a verdict in her favour, producing the first legal determination in the world that passive smoking in the workplace was significantly harmful.

The Health Department was found negligent and had to pay her damages. This precedent meant any employer exposing workers to passive smoking could be sued successfully. The result was an almost immediate ban on smoking in workplaces, airports, shopping centres and eventually pubs and clubs in Australia.

Scholem got enormous satisfaction that her tenacity led to future generations not being subjected to the same harm she had suffered.

She continued working on a contract basis for the Family Court to the age of 78, was a very regular writer of letters published in the Sydney Morning Herald for many years, mainly on political matters, and despite a range of other health problems, lived to 91, albeit on continuous oxygen for the last years of her life.

She is survived by three children Peter, Esther and Stephen, seven grandchildren and one great granddaughter. – Fairfax Sources: Stephen Scholem and Debbie Scholem

FAIRFAX Liesel Scholem pictured with friends who gave her support during her court case against her former employer, the New South Wales Health Department.