|
"Hundreds " missing out on compo for
asbestos" Kelly Andrew
Under-reporting of asbestos-related deaths could mean
hundreds of widows and families have missed out on compensation, a
Wellington law lecturer says.
|
The lung disease asbestosis,
caused by inhaling asbestos fibres, was named as the cause of death on
certificates for 44 men between 1988 and 1999 - but research published
in the New Zealand Medical Journal has found it contributed to
the deaths of 220 others in that time. The research, by Christchurch
School of Medicine researcher Pamela Smartt, says between 20 and 40 per
cent of adult New Zealand men may have been exposed to asbestos in their
workplace, and deaths from asbestos-related lung disease have been
"grossly under-estimated".
Victoria University senior law
lecturer John Miller, who specialises in accident compensation cases,
said under-reporting of asbestos-related deaths had hampered ACC claims.
ACC provides compensation for work-place asbestos illnesses.
|
|
In August, another Wellington
lawyer, Hazel Armstrong, won a $100,000 lump sum payout for the widow of
asbestos victim, Ross Lehmann. Since, she said, ACC had awarded lump
sums to four other victims.
However ACC is appealing in the High Court against the Lehmann award.
ACC chairman David Caygill said
the Government intended that
April 2002, when new legislation came
into force, should be the start date for lump sum compensation
claims, and people who suffered a
personal injury before that time should not qualify.
This statement by David Caygill
confirms why the government has amended the legislation in the Bill
currently before the Select Committee. In their preamble to the Bill
the government claimed the current wording of the Act did not clearly
deal with a claimant who first suffered partial incapacity before 1
April 2002 but whose injury was not diagnosed until after 1 April 2002.
The Government said the Bill amended the legislation to clarify it.
They said the Bill clarifies that if the date on which the person's
personal injury first resulted in the person's incapacity was before 1
April 2002 that person would NOT be
eligible for compensation, irrespective of when a correct
diagnosis was made. Therefore, even if the correct diagnosis had been
denied for years, the intended new
change ensures the
injured person (or in the event of their death, their family)
would not be compensated.
This would apply regardless of
whether such persons had been left performing employment tasks in an
environment that had a particular toxic or hazardous characteristic that
had continued to increase and magnify their neurological and physical
conditions and exacerbate their incapacity because their employer, the
government or their scientists had insisted the working conditions were
safe. (It took 30 years before those in power admitted Vietnam
Vets were exposed to agent orange).
This would apply regardless of
whether such persons had been left working in such working conditions
because incorrect diagnoses of their condition had been made, because
successive governments had taken a lax attitude to hazardous substances,
because statutory workplace safety regulations had not been enforced or
because of apathy from employers.
It would apply because of
iincompetence and/or ignorance about toxic
substances by the medical profession.
In addition, the amendment in the
Bill creates the potential for specialists and clinicians who have
previously denied symptoms were related to toxic or other workplace
injury, to now claim the person's incapacity was caused by a gradual
process that would have preceded 1 April 2002 even if it had not been
previously diagnosed - and so lump sum entitlements could be declined.
These assessors could be the very same people who had previously denied
to the very same patients that the chemicals they had been exposed to
had any causation.
|
|