Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:42:38 +0100

From: Robert Stevens

Subject: Asbestos compensation

This really is no way to run a railroad.

What do we have a Law Commission, and indeed courts, for? If there had not been the farcical Compensation Bill going through Parliament, HMG would not have had the opportunity to reverse a decision which, in my view, is correct and is a good start at putting the law back on track. Instead of reviewing rationally an entire area, we have a knee jerk response to the latest headline.

Hopeless.

Robert Stevens

Andrew Burrows writes:

Although I dislike the reasoning and result in Barker, and agree with the wish to overrule it, the Lord Chancellor's mode of expression seems to me to bear out Rob Stevens's point posted a few weeks ago about the apparent severe difficulties that will be faced in drafting legislation to achieve this result. To say, as the Lord Chancellor does, that there will be legislation so that negligent employers will be made jointly and severally liable does not, on the face of it, meet the point that the reasoning of the majority in Barker did not, as such, impose proportionate liability rather than joint and several liability. Rather the reasoning redefined the damage as (negligently) materially increasing the risk of contracting mesothelioma. Redefining the damage in that way meant that the liability was necessarily proportionate while not departing from the normal rule that negligently caused mesothelioma renders employers jointly and severally liable. So I would have thought that it is really the redefining of the damage that the legislation will need to address not the principle of joint and several liability.

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