Anglo American faces miners’ silicosis ‘test case’ in 2013

FORMER gold miners sick with silicosis will go into arbitration next year with Anglo American SA in a “test case”, according to their attorneys.

The miners claim that they contracted silicosis due to excessive dust inhalation while working in a mine owned by Anglo American, lawyer Richard Meeran, of UK law firm Leighday & Co, said yesterday.

The arbitration hearing would be presided over by a panel consisting of former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo and two former judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal, Ian Farlam and Noel Hurt.

The hearing was scheduled to begin on September 2 next year in Joburg and would be open to the public. The case was brought by 18 people in 2004.

Seventeen were miners and one was the widow of a miner who died before the case began. Another three miners had died in the past few years. The men had all worked at the President Steyn mine in the Free State.

They are being represented by

‘These are people left on the scrap heap by the mining industry’

Leighday, the Legal Resources Centre and Legal Aid SA.

LRC attorney Sayi Nindi said the process had already taken eight years because of the discovery process – Anglo released more than 500 000 documents to them – and the complexities of the case.

Nindi said the arbitration was agreed to by the former miners and Anglo. “There’s no denying that everyone wants the case finished,” she said.

Meeran said silicosis had a latency period of about 10 years from when dust was inhaled to when symptoms showed.

This meant that the mine the men worked in was owned by Anglo American at the time they were exposed to the dust. The company had since sold its gold mining assets in SA. “They [no] longer have gold mining interests, but that does not mean they do not have gold mining liabilities,” he said.

Anglo spokesman Hulisani Rasivhaga confirmed that the company had signed an arbitration agreement.

“All parties are satisfied that the arbitration agreement represents the most effective way to reach a resolution on these claims.”

Rasivhaga declined to comment further on the case.

Meeran said that while

the arbitration case would directly affect only a handful of miners, there were “thousands, maybe tens of thousands”, affected by silicosis.

“Its not unfair to say these are people who have been left on the scrap heap by the mining industry,” Meeran said.

Nindi said the arbitration would be a test case and involved only a few of the possibly thousands of miners affected. “You could call our case a test case to establish the liability to the mine.”

Meeran and his law firm were bringing another case against Anglo in a court in the UK on behalf of 1 700 former gold miners.

Meeran said the matter could have repercussions beyond the miners involved in the arbitration and affect the larger case.

“If it was held liable, then I don’t see any alternative other than Anglo establishing a settlement scheme for all their former miners.”

The first testimony from some of the miners could be taken at the end of the month, because some of them were in such poor health that they might not be able to testify next year. – Sapa