Dust on the Streets and Liability for Environmental Cancers
| Author | Jenny Steele,Nick Wikely |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00078 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
CASES
Dust on the Streets and Liability for Environmental
Cancers
Jenny Steele* and Nick Wikeley*
Introduction
In Margereson vJ.W. Roberts Ltd and Hancock vJ.W. Roberts Ltd,
1
the Court of
Appeal was faced for the first time with the task of delineating the liability of a
manufacturing company for environmental cancers caused by emissions from their
plant. Both plaintiffs
2
had lived near the former J.W. Roberts asbestos factory in
Armley, Leeds, and had contracted the fatal cancer mesothelioma, the only known
cause of which is exposure to asbestos. The J.W. Roberts factory, which closed in
1958, was part of the manufacturing empire of Turner & Newall Ltd (now T&N
plc, the effective defendants).
The incidence of asbestos-related disease was originally confined to the asbestos
textile industry,
3
the so-called first wave
4
of asbestos-related disease, but as
asbestos found more and more industrial applications, so other occupational
groups
5
(the second wave) began to experience the toll of death and disease. Such
cases have generated a substantial number of compensation claims in tort by
injured workers and their dependants.
6
The Margereson and Hancock cases are
unique in that they are the first examples of the third wave of environmental
asbestos cases to reach the English courts.
7
In the event, the Court of Appeal dismissed the defendant company’s appeals
from a finding of liability. In doing so, the Court interpreted Holland J’s decision at
The Modern Law Review Limited 1997 (MLR 60:2, March). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 265
*University of Southampton
We are grateful to Adrian Budgen (Irwin Mitchell) and John Pickering (John Pickering and Partners) for
sight of the transcripts of the decisions of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and to Adrian Budgen
and Robin Stewart QC for valuable comments on a draft of this note.
1 The two cases were heard together in the High Court by Holland J, who delivered his judgment
on 27 October 1995. The defendants’ appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in a
judgment dated 2 April 1996. In preparing this note, we have relied upon transcripts of these
judgments.
2 Strictly speaking, the plaintiff in the first case, Mrs Margereson, sued as widow and administratrix of
the estate of her late husband; Mrs Hancock sued in her own right as a mesothelioma victim.
3 See, eg, Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, Annual Report for 1898 (1900, Cd 27), pp 171–
172 and other sources discussed in Wikeley, Compensation for Industrial Disease (Aldershot:
Dartmouth, 1993), ch 6 and Greenberg, ‘Knowledge of the Health Hazard of Asbestos Prior to the
Merewether Price Report’ (1994) 7 Social History of Medicine 493.
4 Landrigan and Kazemi (eds), The Third Wave of Asbestos Disease: Exposure to Asbestos in Place,
(1991) 643 Annals of New York Academy of Sciences 1.
5 Especially those working in the shipyard, construction and railway engineering industries, in which
asbestos was widely used for insulation purposes.
6 Felstiner and Dingwall, Asbestos Litigation in the United Kingdom — An Interim Report (Oxford:
Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, 1988).
7 However, in an out of court settlement another major asbestos manufacturer paid £45,000 (with no
admission of liability) to a mesothelioma victim who lived near their factory in Barking, East London:
Prior vCape plc (The Independent, news report, 18 July 1993).
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