A case now underway in Britain’s High Court may change fundamental liability rules with regard to asbestos exposure.  The question before the court is whether liability for asbestos-related diseases commences from the time the victim is exposed to asbestos, or when an asbestos-related disease manifests itself.

The lethal asbestos-caused cancer mesothelioma may not be diagnosed for up to forty years after asbestos exposure.  It is an unusual disease with an extraordinary period of latency.  Once a patient is diagnosed, the survival period is usually twelve to eighteen months.

Companies who mined asbestos or manufactured asbestos products have been paying disease-related liability claims for years.  In February of 2006 however, they suspended payments while noting an appeals court ruling which had held that the point of liability was when malignancy manifested itself.  Medical research has set that point at some ten years prior to the appearance of symptoms.

In one of the test cases, the family of Charles O’Farrell, who died from mesothelioma in 2003, won a court judgment for £152,000 in compensation. But insurer Excess, which insured his now-defunct employer, Humphreys & Glasgow, when he was employed there as a steelworker in the 1960s, has refused to pay up.

The insurers say his injury occurred not when he was exposed to asbestos in the 60s, but when the cells in the lining of the lung began to turn malignant. Medical evidence is that this happens roughly 10 years before symptoms appear. At that point the company was no longer trading and was not covered by insurance.  While the insurance company is alive and well today, it is refusing to recognize liability.