Deanna Trevarthen died aged 45, thirteen months after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a fatal cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Deanna’s name will live on in legal circles after her estate’s successful claim for accident compensation.
Before her death, Deanna’s claim for accident compensation was turned down; ACC is not available for the consequences of disease, other than work-related diseases. Her sister-in-law Angela Calver carried on the fight as executrix of Deanna’s estate.
The evidence was that Deanna had ingested asbestos fibres as a young girl, accompanying her father working as an electrician on building sites. Three decades later, mesothelioma was diagnosed; a death sentence. In 2010, ninety people were diagnosed; seventy-eight in 2011. The disease takes decades to manifest itself. Asbestos fibres ingested set off adverse genetic changes in susceptible cells.
Mesothelioma was not a work-related illness for Deanna, though the fibres were ingested on worksites where she had played with asbestos offcuts. Proof was required that she had suffered ‘personal injury by accident’. Accident Compensation said a pattern of exposure to asbestos over time was not a single event; it was not an accident. The disease had arisen as a result of a gradual process. Medical evidence is that mesothelioma may be caused by a single fibre, or a few fibres, or many fibres. The condition, once caused, is not aggravated by further exposure. There is no minimum exposure level below which there is no risk of developing the disease.
Deanna’s estate was entitled to accident compensation, Justice Mallon ruled. She had been exposed to asbestos on a ‘specific occasion’ though any one of multiple exposures could have resulted in the disease. A foreign object does not have to be inhaled only once to amount to an ‘accident’ Her Honour ruled.
Estate of Trevarthen v. Accident Compensation Corporation – High Court (8.07.19)
19.125