Maguire v Harland & Wolff Plc

Hearing date : 10 th February 2004 (At Manchester)

Judgment.

Mrs Maguire, who is now aged 67, fell ill in 2000 and mesothelioma was diagnosed. She has only a short time to live. Her full-time carer is her husband, also aged 67.

Mr and Mrs Maguire were married on the 23 ^rd December 1961 when they began living together first in a flat in Anfield and then in 4a Sandey Street.

During that time and until 1965 Mr Maguire worked as a boilermaker at Harland & Wolff's shipyard where he was exposed to asbestos dust. Happily he has not as yet succumbed to asbestosis or anything worse.

Harland & Wolff accept that they were in breach of duty to him in exposing him to the risks attendant to the inhalation of asbestos dust.

The claim for damages is by Mrs Maguire. She alleges that Harland & Wolff, her husband's employers, owed her a duty to take reasonable care not to expose her to the risk of injury to her health consequent upon her exposure to asbestos dust brought home each working day by her husband. She alleges that Harland & Wolff were in breach of that duty.

Harland and Wolff deny that they owed Mrs Maguire any such duty because, they assert, it was not foreseeable that Mrs Maguire was at risk having regard to the amount and frequency of her exposure to asbestos dust and the state of actual or imputed knowledge of the risk in the period 1961–1965.

This is a secondary exposure claim. Unlike the hearing before Holland J. in Margereson .v. J.W. Roberts Ltd [1996] PIQR 154, which lasted about six weeks, the whole hearing before me, was completed in one day.

No oral evidence was given at all. All essential facts were agreed and the hearing and my decision depend upon my perusal and evaluation of the contents of four ring binders and of the submissions of Mr David Allan Q.C. for the claimant, Mrs Maguire, and of Mr Charles Feeny, for the defendants, Harland & Wolff, on the contents of the ring binders and on the law.

I was referred to, in particular, the following authorities: -

Gunn .v. Wallsend Slipway and Engineering (Waterhouse J. 7 November 1988)

Owen .v. IMI Yorkshire Copper Tube (Buxton J. 15

Margereson v. J.W. Roberts (Holland J. 1996 PIQR 154) (C.A. [1996] PIQR 19)

Jeromson and Dawson .v. Shell Tankers (Mr Raymond Machell Q.C. 1 February 2000) (C.A. 2001 PIQR 19)

Insofar as those authorities contain expressions of legal principle they determine my approach to the facts but I must decide Mrs Maguire's claim solely on the material contained in the four ring binders.

I also emphasise that I ignore completely my considerable experience at the Bar in asbestos cases, now imperfectly recollected, and cases that I have decided while on the Bench.

The evidence of Mr and Mrs Maguire consisted of their written statements put before me on the basis that I should decide what weight to give to them.

In my judgment there is no reason to think that their descriptions of the state of affairs during the years 1961 to 1965 were other than unexaggerated and accurate recollections. There was no evidence put in by Harland & Wolff to dispute their statements.

Mrs Maguire said: -

"The only time when I have been exposed to asbestos is from washing Jimmy's work clothes. When Jimmy came home the first thing he did was go to the bathroom and get changed. The clothes were dusty and dirty. He left them on the floor, and then I sorted them out. If he was going to wear them the following day I put them on the ottoman in the bedroom. If they were going in the wash I either put them in the washing basket or on top of the lid. We had tall thin washing baskets made from plastic with holes in with a plastic lid. If the clothes weren't too bad I put them in the basket with the other clothes. However when they were very wet or dusty, or had creosote on them then I turned the lid of the basket upside down and put them in the lid.

In the early days he wore what we call dungarees, which were basically jeans. They were trousers without a bib and brace. He wore a working shirt and a pullover. He wore an ordinary jacket. He changed his underway daily. He changed his shirt every one or two days. Daily in summer and perhaps every two days in winter. He had a clean pullover every day. He wore the same in summer and winter. He wore pullovers to the neck to protect him from the sparks.

The dust and fibres seemed to stick to the hand knitted socks and jumpers.

Our first house in Rockfield Road was a flat in a big house. There was a main living room and a bedroom. At that time, I took clothes to the washhouse but they would not let us take dirty overalls. I washed Jimmy's work clothes at home. I washed every weekend. I took them into the back yard. I shook them out and emptied the pockets and straightened out the turn-ups. I brushed them with a little hand brush to get the worst of the dust off. I did this in the yard because the clothes were dirty and dusty. He got dust in his turn-ups, in his pockets and everywhere. I shook the dust out of his jumpers and socks. He also had a cap for work. He wore either a cloth cap or corduroy cap. I washed the cap, which was also covered in dust. I breathed in the dust when I shook out his clothes. I then left the clothes in a bucket to soak overnight with washing soda. The following morning I scrubbed them in the yard. I had extra buckets of water to swill them off. I rinsed them out and then hung them to dry

When we moved to Sandy Street it was another flat and I used the same procedure for washing his work clothes. By the time we moved to Nith Street, we had our daughter, Christine. We bought a boiler, which had a handle with an agitator. We mainly got this for washing Christine's nappies. I still washed the overalls in the yard as they were too dirty to wash in the boiler."

Mr Maguire said: -

"Whilst working for Harland & Wolff I worked in the shell; boiler room and engine rooms of ships. There were heavy exposures to asbestos dust whilst I worked in the boiler room and engine rooms.

I also worked close to laggers and scalers who were knocking asbestos lagging off; they were employed by Harland & Wolff. They knocked lagging off for different trades, such as boilermakers and also for pipe fitters. The asbestos lagging they knocked off was left on the floor. It was left to the scalers to clean it up, but this didn't happen until the end of the job. In the meantime, everyone walked through it. When we walked through it dust got on to our shoes and onto our clothes. In the lower parts of the boiler I worked on my knees in amongst asbestos debris.

When the scalers cleaned up they picked up big bits of asbestos and put them in bags and brushed the remainder up dry. It was dusty when they brushed up.

Later on in the job when repairs and alterations to the pipes and boiler had been undertaken. The laggers re-lagged the pipe work and boiler. I worked next to laggers who were lagging. They mixed compo made from asbestos powder in a bucket. Dust came up when they put the powder in the bucket. They put the compo on the pipes and smoothed it down. When they put it on the pipes bits of wet compo fell down and dried where it lay. Then when we walked through it, it disintegrated into dust. In the boiler room there was grating for different levels. Any asbestos cement that landed on a grating fell down between the gratings where it disintegrated into dust.

I also saw laggers using preformed sections. They used preformed sections in a semi-circular shape to lag pipe work. The sections contained asbestos. They put two semi-circles around the pipes and then fastened it into place. When they came to a bend in the pipe, they cut it into segments to go around the bend. It was very dusty when they cut the preformed sections. I got dust on my clothes from laggers cutting preformed sections. The bits of preformed sections, which were no good, were just left. Some laggers would put them to one side, but a lot wouldn't and just left them for the scalers to clean up at the end of the job. In the meantime they were disturbed and stood on and more dust was created.

As a boilermaker I used asbestos blankets when burning or welding. The blankets were put over areas, which had to be protected. For example, if we were working near electrical cables, the asbestos blankets were put over the cables so that they were not damaged by our work. They came in various sizes from 2' x 3' upwards. If I wanted a blanket I asked a foreman or charge hand and he sent someone to where I was working with a blanket. I then positioned it where I wanted it. Sometimes I wet the blanket, as this reduced the dust but it meant that the asbestos fibres stuck to me if I touched it.

There were times when I was working that I knelt on the blanket, but this only happened infrequently. It was dusty when I put the blanket down and moved it about. It was dusty so that asbestos dust got on my clothes.

At Harland & Wolff I spent about half of my time in the engine rooms and boiler rooms. The rest of my time I did deck work and shell work. I was exposed to asbestos dust whenever I worked in the boiler or engine rooms. On deck I was exposed to asbestos from the asbestos lagged pipes. I got asbestos dust on my clothes if I brushed against pipes. I was also exposed to asbestos from the asbestos blanket that I used

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