£1m to shipyard asbestos victim

Published on Friday 25 May 2007 00:08

A FORMER shipyard worker who is battling an asbestos- related disease yesterday won £948,565 in High Court damages.

The award to Raymond Shanks is one of the biggest of its kind. Mr Shanks, 59, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2005 - two years after his son, Michael, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 28.

Before Michael died, Mr Shanks promised him that he would support his two children, now aged nine and seven, said Judge Gary Hickinbottom in London.

Mr Shanks, who has been married to Kathleen for 37 years and also has a daughter, Penny, sued Swan Hunter Group, for whom he worked as an electrician at their shipyard in Wallsend, Tyneside, for four years from 1965.

In November last year, a senior High Court official entered judgment on liability in Mr Shanks's favour for damages to be assessed.

Giving his ruling on the amount of the claim, which was disputed by the company, the judge said that while Mr Shanks was at Wallsend, he worked close to laggers and others working with asbestos.

This was his only exposure to asbestos during his working life.

He emigrated to Adelaide, Australia, with his wife and family in 1982, where he worked as a construction manager, but returned to the UK in October 2005 after his diagnosis.

After an operation and intensive chemotherapy, he has enjoyed a stable and good quality of life since April 2006, although he has constant pain in his chest, can only walk at a "snail's pace" and needs his wife to "fetch and carry".

But the judge said Mr Shanks, of West Monkseaton, Tyneside, was likely to decline after April 2008 and was only likely to survive until early 2009.

He awarded Mr Shanks 70,000 for pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.

The judge noted that before the onset of "this appalling and inevitably fatal disease", he had been particularly fit and active and had enjoyed playing squash and walking.

The balance of the award was made up of sums for loss of earnings past and present, relocation costs and other expenses.