Son of Harland and Wolff shipyard worker entitled to damages for asbestos-related condition linked to late father's job

Senior judges overturned a previous decision to reject 72-year-old James Moore’s claim over exposure to dust and fibres on contaminated work clothing brought into the family home during his childhood.

In 2012 Mr Moore, a company director, discovered that he has the lung condition pleural plaques.

He sued Harland & Wolff and another firm of contractors as an alleged secondary victim.

Lawyers for Mr Moore argued that he came into contact with asbestos particles on the coat and overalls worn by his father on return from working as a pipe lagger at the shipyard.

Exposure continued until he married and moved out of the family’s east Belfast home in September 1974, it was contended.

Mr Moore described hiding under his father’s work coat as a child and having it placed on his bed for extra warmth on cold nights.

He also recalled that the coat and overalls felt prickly to the touch.

Based on a previous court ruling, liability for secondary exposure to asbestos dust and fibres is limited to periods after October 1965 because employers were not aware of the risk of injury before that date.

The defendants suggested that by his teenage years Mr Moore would have been spending less time at home and not playing under his father’s coat.

His compensation claim for the relevant nine-year period was initially rejected by the High Court.

A judge accepted on the balance of probabilities that Mr Moore had developed his condition through contact with asbestos on his father’s work clothing.

But he held that the plaintiff failed to establish exposure to dust and particles in the family home between 1965 and 1974 materially increased the risk of contracting pleural plaques.

According to the judge, that period followed a longer 14-year spell when there was likely to have been more intensive exposure.

Mr Moore’s legal team argued that he erred in law in reaching his conclusions.

Backing those submissions, the Court of Appeal held that the medical evidence was supported by accounts provided by the plaintiff and other witnesses.

An 83-year-old man who worked at the shipyard recalled how his coat was often covered in asbestos dust and fibres, and that his wife had to regularly wash his overalls in the kitchen.

Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan highlighted concessions made in the case about workmen sometimes bringing home contaminated clothes and family members later developing pleural plaques.

She said the original High Court findings on Mr Moore’s exposure were not limited to him playing with a coat in childhood.

“We consider that this is a rare case where the judge has plainly erred in the ultimate decision that he reached,” Dame Siobhan ruled.

Allowing the appeal, she gave the parties time to resolve issues around the appropriate pay-out to be made.

The Chief Justice said it should be “a relatively simple exercise to establish moderate provisional damages for the development of pleural plaques by this appellant”.