Secondary exposure to asbestos

Maguire v Harland and Woolff plc and another CA TLR 27 January

By a 2:1 majority the Court of Appeal overruled the decision of the judge awarding damages to Mrs Maguire for secondary exposure to asbestos dust brought home by her husband who was employed at the defendant’s shipyard from 1961, when he married the claimant, until 1965. The alarm about asbestos did not sound until late 1965 when it began to be appreciated that there could be no safe or permissible level of exposure to asbestos dust. If the defendants were to be liable to Mrs Maguire, liability would arise on the unusual basis that the defendants had failed to address a risk which had not yet been identified or addressed by anyone else.