Legal costs hamper asbestos deal
News24 & Reuters, 11 Dec
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Johannesburg - Steeper than expected legal fees have complicated an out-of-court settlement between Cape PLC and South African miners who blame the company for asbestos-related diseases they contracted in the 1970s.
The two parties said last week they were close to reaching agreement on a £20 settlement offer, but a spokesperson for the Northern Cape government said on Tuesday that the offer did not account for legal fees of around £6 million.
Chris Matlhako said the settlement amount had been based on an understanding that Cape PLC would pay an additional £2.25 million in legal fees owed to Britain’s Legal Services Commission, which has been paying the claimants’ legal costs.
“There was a tacit understanding that this provided the basis for us to tie this up,” he said, adding the final costs had come in much higher than originally anticipated.
“We are now exploring various means to attempt to deal with this matter,” Matlhako said.
A spokesperson for the claimants in London said no money would be taken from the compensation award for legal costs.
“I should emphasise that. . . as a matter of principle, we have no intention of deducting even a cent from any compensation award for the purposes of legal costs,” Richard Meeran, a partner in the London law firm Leigh Day said in a statement. Lawyers for Cape declined to comment on the size of legal costs or the progress of negotiations.
“That’s a matter of confidentiality between all the parties involved,” Geoff Meyer, a lawyer representing the company, said.
Around 7 500 claimants, who blame Cape for diseases contracted at the firm’s asbestos mining operations in South Africa’s Northern and Northern Cape provinces, could be entitled to the award compensation, Matlhako said.
Cape sold off its asbestos mines in the provinces in 1979. Four years later asbestos was declared a hazardous substance, and South Africa began closing down mines.
But 20 years later, people are still contracting the deadly lung disease asbestos can cause.
No deal between UK group and victims
Professional Services Correspondent
Business Day, 12 Dec
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A LONDON lawyer representing SA’s asbestosis victims said yesterday there was no settlement agreement between British group Cape plc and the victims.
However, negotiations were proceeding “in a constructive manner and at a fairly developed stage”, said Richard Meeran, lawyer for the victims.
More than 7000 former asbestos workers at Cape plc’s mines in SA are suing the company in a group action for compensation for asbestos-related diseases contracted while working in mines in Northern Cape and Northern Province.
About 300 of the original claimants have died from asbestos- related diseases since the legal proceedings against Cape plc were initiated.
Meeran dismissed last week’s reports that a settlement had been reached. He said reports in the media last week and at the weekend about a settlement having been concluded were “misleading and inaccurate”.
Northern Cape premier Manne Dipico and his Northern Province counterpart, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, have both been to London to attend settlement negotiations.
Meeran said he was impressed with “the positive role” played by both men in the settlement process. Cape plc wants legal costs to be included in the settlement.
However, the SA delegation is lobbying for costs to be paid by the British group outside of the settlement figure.
Legal costs are huge because the case has gone on for so long.
Blow to asbestos claimants
Business Day, 12 Dec
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Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled that people suffering from asbestos-related diseases will not receive compensation if they were exposed to the mineral fibres by more than one employer.
In a complex ruling on six linked cases, the Court of Appeal upheld the previous High Court judgement that in cases where workers were exposed to asbestos dust through more than one employer, it was impossible to prove which exposure caused the disease.
Therefore no employer is liable to compensate the worker, the court said.
The Appeal Court also reversed another ruling that had awarded one dying man £155,000, and said he must now give it back.
Asbestos is a mineral that was popular as a thermal insulator.
But while manufacturers and the government were aware of the health risks associated to occupational asbestos exposure, it continued to be widely used until the mid-1970s as an insulator and fireproofer.
People who were most-exposed to the substance - construction workers, welders, ship builders and auto mechanics - have been increasingly diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases, such as lung fibrosis and mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. It can take 50 years from the time of exposure to asbestos for the cancer to show up.
Dismissing the appeals, Lord Justice Brooke said: “Much as one would like to accommodate the arguments for the claimants, in our judgement they contained an inherent illogicality.”
Failing to uphold the ruling, he said, would be accepting that “all those who have suffered injury after being exposed to a risk of that injury from which someone else should have protected them” should be able to get compensation “even when they are quite unable to prove who was the culprit.”
Hundreds of compensation claims have been delayed awaiting the decision.
Anthony Coombs, lawyer for mesothelomia sufferer Edwin Matthews, called Tuesday’s decision “an injustice” that will affect 700 to 800 people each year who go to court to seek compensation for developing the terminal disease.
The six claimants can still petition the Law Lords in the House of Lords, Britain’s highest court of appeal, and Coombs said he understood all six would be doing so.
Asbestos miners battle for payment
James Lamont
Business Day, 12 Dec
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Government delegation says it is days away from a settlement with Cape plc
THE dust cover of the billiard table at Koegas mine club still lies draped over the green felt,22 years after the asbestos mine was closed. Across the swollen Orange River, piles of geologists’ notebooks in the deserted mine manager’s office mark out the deposits of the purest “blue” asbestos in the surrounding hills.
Koegas was the largest asbestos mine in the Northern Cape. Its owner, UK-based Cape plc, provided employment for thousands of local people, who unknowingly stamped and crushed the poisonous fibres used as insulating and building material.
At the weekend, covers of a different kind were laid over the body of a Cornelius Taaibosch in nearby Prieska, the town where asbestos was milled. He worked at Koegas mine for 10 years as an underground crusher. His family says he never regained his health and died suffering from the chronic respiratory difficulties that characterise asbestosis.
Taaibosch was one of about 7300 people claiming compensation from Cape plc. He was also the 40th person to die of asbestosis in Prieska this year. Three hundred people have died of asbestos-linked illnesses since 1997, and the numbers are increasing at a rate of about one death a week.
“They (the company) knew when they were mining what the results would be. They made a lot of money and then went away. Prieska really didn’t get rich from asbestos. All the money went to Britain,” says Cecil Skeffers, the chairman of the local African National Congress branch and the head of Concerned People Against Asbestos, a local community group. Taaibosch was buried the day after an SA government delegation returned from talks with Cape plc in London in an attempt to reach an out-of-court settlement.
Manne Dipico, the premier of Northern Cape and a member of the delegation, claims to be “days away” from reaching a £20m settlement. Without the proposed settlement at hand, the Royal Court of Justice is scheduled to meet soon to begin management of a trial date set for April.
Cape plc has not acknowledged liability for the cases of asbestos poisoning in its mines and mining communities in SA.
However, Montpellier, a construction group which holds 30% of Cape plc, and which took over management of the company last month, has said it would “support the concept of an affordable settlement”.
The first claims against Cape plc were filed four years ago after more than 10000 employees at asbestos mines in the Northern Cape and Northern Province were diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases between 1977 and 1989.
But with legal costs escalating, uncertainty about the company’s finances and poverty in the local community, a sense of urgency has pushed parties towards a settlement.
“We hope that within three to six months, the first tranche of payments could be made to the claimants. We are losing people daily. In the end, you might find there are no people left,” says Dipico.
Payment of the legal costs of the matter is a stumbling block to an agreement. The company wants legal costs, estimated at £6m, to be included within the £20m settlement.
The SA delegation, however, is lobbying for the costs to be reduced to £2,5m by the British Legal Services Commission and for Cape plc to pay them outside of the settlement.
If an agreement is struck, Gert Webb, an asbestosis sufferer, may receive money to pay for his medical expenses. Webb is house-bound in Prieska, suffering from chest and back pains, skin lesions and lack of energy. He prepared dynamite in the asbestos mines for only a year and a half. His entire family live off a government welfare grant.
“I didn’t know I would get sick,” he says. “It takes a long time to get angry because the sickness is so slow. I’m worried that my family won’t have any money. I want to know the company would pay out because I might not be around.”
Once a settlement is reached, Dipico intends to lobby for funds from the British government to rehabilitate the area.
But the threat of asbestos lives on.
Seyathie Mitha, the assistant director of environment in the Northern Cape government, believes the community will be at risk long after Cape plc’s settlement is made.
