For many people diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease, one of the most immediate and stressful questions is: “I don’t even know where I was exposed?”
It’s a perfectly valid concern and is often one of the first comments made when talking about compensation. Relevant exposures often happened over 40 or 50 years ago, at a company that no longer exists, on a worksite that has long since been demolished. Your memory of the specific products you handled is likely hazy.
Please be reassured: you are not expected to be a complete historian of your own working life. Uncovering that history and proving your exposure is our job. It is one of the most critical roles we play as specialist dust disease lawyers. We take pride in our role as legal investigators.
Let’s walk through an anonymised example of how we built a case from someone with only a limited memory of the relevant events.
The First Conversation: “Meet John”
“John,” was an 85-year-old retired man who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma.
John is proud that he had only one job for his entire life, working for a large company. He tells us that he was there for 54 years before retiring in 2004, during which time he worked at several of their locations.
John says that he was always a clerk, and never did any labouring type work. However, he speaks of a building in the CBD which we know from previous cases was sprayed with asbestos fibre in the early 1960s.
We ask John about this, and he says that he cannot recall any asbestos spraying work occurring or being present when any other construction work was done. He does, however, say that part of his job in the 1960s involved delivering messages throughout the building. He says he went to every bit of the building and knew it like the back of his hand.
This is our starting point.
The Deep Dive Interview
We sat with John at his nursing home and patiently went through his life story. We didn’t just ask about work. We ask about his houses, his cars, his hobbies.
Sometimes a memory of a particular street or suburb can unlock a memory of a workplace. We can use old photographs and maps to help jog memory. This didn’t help much with John.
We asked about other common types of exposures – during home renovations, or working on brakes, or from family members’ clothes. John has a very clear memory of all these things and denies the possibility of any exposure from this. He says he doesn’t like cars.
We asked John about the people he worked with, and he gave us a few names.
Step 2: Finding witnesses
John had lost touch with many people he used to work with. He said he used to have lunch with them a bit when he retired, but since then sees them less often.
We check the names on the electoral roll, but can’t find anyone. We also check the names on registers of death notices, and they don’t appear there either. It seems likely that we have the wrong name.
We search more generally, looking for articles about the history of the employer, or Facebook groups where old employees share memories.
Gradually, we locate people who worked there, and who remember John. In time we also locate the people whose names John had given us – but they were spelt wrong.
When we finally talked to these witnesses, they were tradespeople. They recalled John (one had a copy of the menu from his retirement dinner) and also recall all the asbestos that was on the site. They described how they did the work and how, in the 1960’s, 1970’s and even 1980’s the asbestos dust fell onto the ground and lay there such that anyone in the vicinity was exposed.
With this information we are able to run the case for John.
Step 3: Running the case
The employer continued to deny every having employed him, even after we showed their lawyers the watch that was given to him on his retirement by the employer.
However, their denial ultimately does not mean much, as they know that if the matter goes to hearing, they will lose, and he will obtain compensation. As a result, the case settles prior to the Court hearing occurring.
Often, the most powerful evidence comes from former colleagues. Using employment records and other databases, we were able to trace other people who worked with John. We obtained witness statements confirming the dusty conditions, the lack of warnings, and the specific products they all worked with.
This meticulous process turns ‘this is where the exposure may have been’ into a robust legal case that proves when, where, and how you were exposed to asbestos. You do not have to have the answers. You just need to tell your story. We’ll do the rest.