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Andrew Auty
Member - 9 posts
It seems I’m in a minority but for me this is a deeply troubling turn of events.
What would a person with a symptomless plaque receive by way of compensation if they stood before the judge and said “I’m not in the least worried, anxious or depressed about the plaque or what it might mean”? Not much, quite likely nothing, perhaps even a reprimand, or worse, for wasting court time. The whole point of the Scottish proposal “that asbestos-related pleural plaques amount to a material personal injury capable of founding a claim in damages”, is to permit compensation for worry.
But this is self-evidently unjust. According to the logic, those who have no plaques will get nothing even if they worked every day alongside people who now know they have plaques. Clearly, in the eyes of Scottish politicians, they deserve nothing even though they too are “people who have a significantly higher risk than the general population of developing serious asbestos-related disease”. Is their worry any different from those with plaques? Are their chances of serious disease really any different? What if they had been desperately worried from the day they were first exposed, 30 years before their workmate got an x-ray? Nothing.
The crux of the problem:
Whether or not plaques are a material injury is a matter of informed opinion. Let the Scottish politicians explain the criteria against which their “plaques amount to a material injury” opinion was formed. If it is a true opinion then the criteria will be universally valid. If not, we must include the law among the victims.
There must be another way of enabling compensation where Scottish politicians wish it.
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