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Geoffrey Peace died from mesothelioma, an incurable cancer caused by exposure to asbestos dust on 1 October 2017.

Roy Blakey was fit and well and working full time until summer 2016 when he began to notice weight loss and experience breathlessness and back pain. Initially, Roy put this down to occupational asthma.

Patrick Smith was employed by the BBC as an electronics engineer. Throughout his employment he worked at a variety of sites. A large part of his job involved stripping and maintaining parts of transmitters and in doing so he came in to contact with steam pipes which were lagged with asbestos which was inadvertently damaged as he worked on the transmitters. A number of the components also contained asbestos.

Sidney Stump was employed by The Plessey Company Limited in the maintenance department as a mill wright’s mate and later as a pipe fitter from approximately 1957 until 1981/82.

We recently acted for Mr H who was diagnosed with asbestosis in October 2016.

Mr L was only 68 when he developed mesothelioma in the summer of 2018. He described exposure to asbestos for three or four lagging companies in the 1960s.

June W was secretary in Cape Asbestos Factory in Hebden Bridge in the 1950s. She regularly used to have to go out onto the factory floor to deliver and collect messages. Mrs W married her husband Colin in the 1960’s and in 1971 they emigrated to Australia. Mrs W became unwell and was diagnosed with mesothelioma from which she died just before Christmas 2017.

Mr N, who was born in Nigeria in 1938, came over to England in the 1960s and started studying to become a doctor. He only had partial funding so had to work throughout all of his holidays in order to support himself. He worked at Johnson Matthey and also Atlas Stone.

Mr W, who was born in 1940 worked as an architect building schools in Hertfordshire and also worked for Distillers Company Limited in their chemicals and plastics division - carrying out rebuilding and extension design work to several of its factories. He described exposure to asbestos in both these jobs as he oversaw the construction of the factories and Council buildings including schools that are still in existence today. 

Mr H, a retired paper mill worker, developed mesothelioma in 2014. A support group referred him to a firm of solicitors, but unfortunately Mr H was very unwell by then and he died shortly after meeting with them. The solicitors were unable to continue with his claim largely because Mr H’s Will appointed the partners in a firm of solicitors as his executors and they were unable to agree terms with the former first of solicitors to allow them to pursue the claim even under a no win no fee agreement. They also had no direct evidence of exposure to asbestos during the period for which they had been able to track down insurers for the company, because Mr H’s statement indicated that he had retired much earlier than he actually had.

Reg and Billy W had shared a house for many years, living also with their aged father who died in 2016. In the summer of 2017 Billy became unwell. He was too frail for a biopsy, but the hospital thought that he had mesothelioma, which is an aggressive asbestos related cancer. Billy’s brother Reg contacted Helen Childs of RWK Goodman who was able to visit Billy within days. Unfortunately his condition was deteriorating so fast that Billy was unable to give details of his exposure to asbestos by then. He died the very next day, aged just 68.

We were approached by Sandra in January of 2018 following the death of her father 5 years earlier. Sandra’s father had worked for Morfitts of Leeds in the 1950s and was exposed to substantial asbestos.