Last updated 12:00, Tuesday, 03 June 2008

A HIGH Court battle which could threaten compensation for future Barrow sufferers of deadly asbestos cancers was due to begin today.

In a series of test cases, insurance firms are claiming that responsibility for compensation payments to sufferers of mesothelioma cancer should be triggered when it is diagnosed and not by the insurers of firms when the victims were first exposed to asbestos in the workplace 30 or 40 years earlier.

A win by insurance companies could have a knock-on effect that might leave new victims of slow to develop mesothelioma – who can currently get payments of £150,000 plus for them and their families – retired and with no one to sue for compensation.

Many with the disease only live for a year after diagnosis.

In Barrow the secretary of the local Trades Union Council Bob Pointer said: “This has come out of the blue.

“Like the pleural plaques decision last year (which ended compensation payments for painless asbestos lung scarring) it is going to affect a lot of people in Barrow if the insurers win.

“With pleural plaques the insurers argued there would be more money that could be spent on sufferers of diseases like mesothelioma, now they are even trying to get out of that. They can’t have it both ways.”

The nine-week test case hearing in London is aimed at settling a fierce legal debate over the point in time when insurers’ liability is “triggered” in respect of mesothelioma, which takes 30 years or more to develop.

Around 2,000 people a year are diagnosed with it including around 15 a year in Barrow, most of them ex-shipyard workers.