GP blamed asbestos in medical school for cancer that killed him decades later £500,000 payout for family of doctor who encountered lethal cladding as a student
THE family of a Birmingham doctor who died from cancer, which he believed was caused by breathing in asbestos while a medical student, is to get a £500,000 payout.
Dr Ian Pardoe, a GP and acupuncture specialist, died of mesothelioma in February 2012, at the age of 51, only months after the incurable illness had been diagnosed.
He underwent experimental treatment in a bid to prolong his life but the cancer was too aggressive.
In a compensation claim begun before his death, the medic claimed he was exposed to deadly asbestos while taking shortcuts as a student in the 1980s.
The father, who married fiancée Monisha shortly before he died, claimed to have seen asbestos-lagged pipework in an underground pass linking the University of Birmingham with the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Dr Pardoe believed the shortcut had been filled with the lethal insulation during maintenance work taking place in the basement when he was studying medicine there in the 1980s.
The father-of-three and stepfatherof-two made the link to the asbestos before he died at the QE.
Following his death, the claim was continued on behalf of his estate, although his family faced a fight after both the university and Secretary of State for Health denied liability.
But this week, after out-of-court negotiations, representatives of his estate agreed to settle the case, with £500,000 going to widow Monisha Pardoe and his family.
Judge Patrick Moloney QC signed off the settlement in a brief hearing at the High Court in London.
Michael Rawlinson QC, acting for the late GP’s estate, told the court that witnesses had come forward to say that they too remembered seeing asbestos dust in the corridor.
Others had denied it, he added. Even had asbestos exposure been proved, lawyers faced a difficult task in convincing a judge to award the level of damages claimed.
The claim was partly based on the fact that Dr Pardoe had several patients when he died. He had insisted they would have been worth a significant amount of income had he survived.
The court heard that the case, which had been due for a five-day trial, was considered by both sides to
He knew he had been exposed to the dust in the underground corridors he used as a student to get to and from lectures
be risky. Instead, they agreed to settle it on the basis that Dr Pardoe’s estate will receive £500,000, considered to be 50 per cent of the full value of any potential payout.
Widow Mrs Pardoe said: “We were devastated by the diagnosis, particularly as Ian knew how serious it was, but he was determined to fight it.
“Ian thought long and hard about where he might have come into contact with asbestos. He knew he had been exposed to the dust in the underground corridors he used as a student to get to and from lectures.
“Ian and I should have had a long and happy married life together but we’ve been robbed of that, and his children have lost their devoted father at such a young age.”
Monisha Pardoe