Electrician who lost wife to deadly asbestos wins right to battle for £1m
‘Had to lie in dust while working’
AN ELECTRICIAN whose wife was killed by deadly asbestos she inhaled over 40 years ago has won the right to fight for up to £1million in damages.
Lydia Carey, 60, died in November after being exposed to toxic fibres on her husband John’s work overalls.
She was exposed to the substance when she washed her spouse’s dust-soaked clothes or hugged and kissed him, London’s High Court heard.
Mr Carey, 62, said he was exposed to large amounts of asbestos while working at Vauxhall’s factory in Dunstable, Bedfordshire in the 1970s – which he said ‘crawled’ with the substance.
He also claimed that the car manufacturing plant, where he worked as a maintenance technician, felt like it ‘was held together with asbestos’.
Judge Karen Walden-Smith said: ‘He described that they would sometimes have to walk through, kneel or even lie in dust in order to work.’ Mrs Carey was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, in October 2017. The deadly fibres lay dormant in Mrs Carey’s body from the ‘window of exposure’ – 1976 to 1979 – until they triggered the cancer that killed her last year.
Her husband sued the car giants over her premature death, but Vauxhall Motors denied liability, disputing that the Dunstable factory was the source of the asbestos which caused her cancer.
Lawyers for the company said her exposure to the fibres may have stemmed from contact with her father’s clothing as a youngster, as he had also worked with asbestos in the 1960s. Vauxhall also disputed that Mr Carey was exposed to substantial amounts of asbestos on a ‘routine basis’ at its factory.
But Judge Walden-Smith ruled that while he worked at the plant ‘there was still a considerable amount of dust’ in the workplace.
Although Mr Carey had not worked directly with asbestos, he would still have been working in ‘close proximity’ to the dust and fibres, she said. The court heard that his exposure to the substance would likely have been ‘significant’. The company had offered an overalls washing scheme, but Mr Carey had not used it.
Judge Walden- Smith added: ‘While the description of being “covered” in dust might be an exaggeration, I am satisfied that there was dust in the factory, and that... it included asbestos fibres which would be picked up onto clothes, hair and skin, and transferred home.
‘There would then be further contact of the dust and fibres through the laundering of clothes and normal personal contact.’
She added: ‘I am satisfied that, on this preliminary issue, liability has been made out.’
The ruling means the court will now go on to discuss compensation at a future hearing – which could see Mr Carey being awarded damages of up to £1million. Mr and Mrs Carey had just celebrated 40 years of marriage when she died, and he described how her diagnosis had come ‘completely out of the blue’.
‘We were together since our teens,’ he said. ‘She was my world, she meant everything to me. She was a lovely lady, very bubbly.
‘We have four grandchildren and she was so much looking forward to seeing them grow up. She had everything to go on for.’
Vauxhall’s Dunstable factory was closed in 1992, and the site employed around 5,500 staff.