Green light for asbestos death appeal

ACC has been allowed to appeal a decision with potentially wideranging consequences, granting cover posthumously to a woman who contracted a deadly asbestos cancer from hugging her father.

Deanna Trevarthen, 45, was among the youngest person in New Zealand to die from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer directly linked to asbestos.

When she died in 2016 she had claimed ACC for a range of entitlements such as treatment costs, weekly compensation, a lump sum and funeral costs.

ACC declined the claim but Trevarthen’s estate continued the fight and, in a decision issued in July, a High Court judge said Trevarthen qualified for cover.

The lawyer for her estate, Beatrix Woodhouse, said it was a significant decision that extended ACC cover to mesothelioma victims who contracted it from secondary exposure to asbestos, not directly through their work.

The disease can be contracted from a single exposure.

Work-related mesothelioma was already covered by ACC.

ACC needed permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal and now the same judge, Justice Jill Mallon, has granted it.

ACC considered that all diseases, however caused, were excluded from cover unless specifically included. The judge said ACC thought the effect of her decision was that all diseases were included provided they were caused in one of the ways specified in the law.

The judge agreed that the question of the extent and route by which diseases could be covered by ACC was an important one, and not straightforward.

She accepted the appeal raised a question of law capable of bona fide and serious argument, and that her decision might have implications for ACC beyond Trevarthen’s claim.

She acknowledged the time the case had taken already, but was satisfied the appeal was important enough to outweigh the cost and delay of a further appeal.