Occupational Diseases: Australian Asbestos Lung Cancer Ruling Significant

A court case in Western Australia looks to have implications for lung cancer victims who were exposed to asbestos. The Supreme Court of Western Australia awarded $600,000 in compensation to the family of Paul Cotton, who died from lung cancer in 2002. Cotton had been a smoker but came into contact with asbestos in the 1970s and 1990s.

Asbestos lung cancer ruling sets 'significant' precedent

Cotton's legal claim was against James Hardie, the South Australian Government, and the Millennium Inorganic Chemicals company. The lawyer, Tim Hammond, argued that Cotton's smoking and his asbestos exposure lead to his lung cancer. "Now they weren't our views, they were the views of some of the most respected medical practitioners in Australia, in that they said in their experience asbestos as a cancer causing agent combines with smoking to radically increase your risk of getting lung cancer," said Hammond. Hammond said the win was important for future such cases: "There must be hundreds of people going undiagnosed for the role that asbestos has played in their lung cancer, that if it's successfully picked up, this case will be an extremely useful precedent in achieving an amount of compensation for those people who would otherwise probably go uncompensated."