Personal injury news

Asbestos dust kills daughter

A widower whose wife died of asbestos disease caused by her exposure as a little girl has received a £107,500 compensation payout. When Sylvie Tapley was a child she used to sit on her father's knee when he returned from the asbestos factory where he worked. Dust inhaled from his clothes would eventually prove fatal. Sylvie was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2000 and died from the disease less than a year later in April 2001, aged 59. Husband Terry Tapley said: 'I would never have believed the obstructions put in our path in what seemed to us an obvious case.

Anyone else facing the same situation should do as I did and seek the specialist legal advice needed to succeed with a claim. I have had to go over Sylvie's death every three months and I have not been able to grieve properly because of taking this case forward.' Sylvie's father, William Harknett, used to work at the Central Asbestos Company Ltd in Bermondsey, south east London, in the 1950s and early 60s where he ground and bagged blue asbestos.

He came home at lunchtime in his work clothes and Sylvie would sit on his knee. Solicitor Pauline Chandler, from Pannone and Partners, said: 'We had to prove that Sylvie's father's employers should have been aware of the dangers employees' family members faced.' She added that Sylvie had not been eligible for industrial injuries benefit because she did not develop the asbestos cancer as a result of her employment.

Source: http://www.hazards.org/asbestos/