Wife of man who died from mesothelioma secures £250k payout

A woman who lost her husband to the industrial disease mesothelioma has secured a payout of more than £250,000.

According to reports in Spalding Today, Jayne Beesley was awarded the money during a recent hearing.

Caused by previous exposure to asbestos, mesothelioma is diagnosed in around 2,100 people in Britain each year, figures cited by Cancer Research UK suggest.
The condition was first detected in John Lambie in June 2006 and he died five months later.

He had been exposed to asbestos while working for the New Century Group, which was sued by Ms Beesley.

In a new development, Mr Justice Hamblen awarded her £72,000 in damages for the suffering endured by her late husband.

He also awarded £1,790 for funeral expenses, £3,000 for a holiday that had to be cancelled, £2,000 for the "intangible benefits" she lost when her husband passed away and £70,000 for future loss of earnings.

For more information: rjw.co.uk/News

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40 billion reasons why asbestos litigation will grow

Forty billion dollars of designated funds currently available in court-established trust funds is providing abundant incentive to already rich attorneys with asbestos-settling know-how.

That could help explain why Madison County's asbestos docket is surging after some years of decline.

Dr. Charles Bates and Dr. Charles Mullin, in their report "State of the Asbestos Litigation Environment-October 2008," surveyed information obtained from roughly 40 asbestos personal injury bankruptcy trusts. The authors state the trusts have a combined value of $33 to $40 billion in liquid assets, not including insurance.

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Man with mesothelioma tries to find workmates

TIME is running out for a man fighting for justice. Billy Lavender, 63, was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a deadly disease caused by exposure to asbestos, earlier this year.

He believes the exposure occurred while he was working as a fitter’s mate at the Rank Flour Mill – now the Baltic art gallery – during the 1960s and 70s.

Now the search is on to find former workmates who should be able to help him make a claim against his ex-employers.

And his solicitors, industrial illness specialists Irwin Mitchell, have released some photographs in a bid to jog some memories.

Mr Lavender, from Gateshead, had left shortly before the picture was taken in 1982, but many of his former colleagues will be in the snap.

Roger Maddocks, from the law firm, said: “It is a long time since the mill was closed and since this photograph was taken, but we hope this photo will jog some fading memories.

“Everyone who was in the photo was likely to have been given a copy, so maybe it will ring a bell with somebody.

“There will be those who worked in the mill itself who may have seen Mr Lavender working on pipework. There will be others who have seen him at work in the fitting shop or boilerhouse.

“Even the smallest piece of information might prove to be an essential piece in the jigsaw.

“Those who have provided witness statements to date remember Mr Lavender as being a quiet employee who could be seen working away in a variety of locations throughout the mill wearing his blue cap and overalls.

“Tragically we are fighting against the clock to secure compensation for a gentleman who has become an innocent victim of a terrible illness which could and should have been prevented.

“Mr Lavender’s case is yet another example of how devastating mesothelioma can be. It may lie dormant for decades but once it takes effect it is fast-acting and painful.”

Mr Lavender, also known as William, has picked out a joiner and two fitters he definitely worked with, though he cannot remember their names.

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Loneliness as a Way of Life

Are we always either lonely or not lonely? Or does loneliness ebb and flow, increasing sharply at times like this - at least for the bereaved - just before Christmas?

It's confusing how we use the word and its cognates.

"One man alone" can suggest something positive - intrepid independence, an Ayn Rand hero. "Loner" can go either way, depending on whether it describes a beguilingly romantic rock star or a neighborhood creep.

"Lonesome" makes you feel like comforting the unfortunate party. "Solitude" sounds inviting, but "solitary" - especially when you add a capital "S" - does not.

To be sure, loneliness is worth thinking about at holiday time. For Thomas Dumm, who teaches politics at Amherst College, it's no abstraction. A widower, he lost both his wife and mother in recent years, and his daughter has moved out. He seems an ideal guide to the topic.

Yet Loneliness as a Way of Life arrives as a bizarre, fascinating book, more a document than a coherent study. In its inadvertent portrait of its tortured-soul author, an angry writer imprisoned in the hot air of academic discourse, it makes the point Dumm thinks he's making overtly: that our greatest loneliness is a failure to connect to our true selves.

At the outset of Loneliness, Dumm declares himself most interested in the "political dimension" of loneliness. For the first two-thirds of the book he operates as a typical expositor of high-toned cultural material. He expatiates on King Lear. He ponders Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism seeks loneliness among citizens as a way of controlling them. He interminably annotates Death of a Salesman, Moby Dick, and the film Paris, Texas - not much of that commentary illuminates loneliness.

Meanwhile, an unacademic anger shoots from the book's pages at odd points: blunt contempt for salesmen in general and their "complete insubstantiality," vituperative hatred for George W. Bush, "his sovereign madness, his stupidity."

Only on Page 95, when Dumm surprisingly leaps into discussion of his marital wars with his wife, Brenda, before lung cancer struck her down, does the book come almost frighteningly alive as Dumm's bland, theoretical vocabulary disappears. Indeed, he plunges us into his upbringing with a speed that induces vertigo. The seventh of nine children of - yes - an insurance salesman, Dumm admits to having been "a difficult child, prone to screaming fits, angry, bored, sharp-tongued, sometimes mean." He writes that his mother, "who could not love me and whom I learned not to love in return," would lock him away "in a cubbyhole closet under the staircase in the dining room." From his mother, writes Dumm, "I first gained my sense of loneliness as a way of life."

For the full review, go to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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