Dear Colleagues 

 

Last week the July 2010 issue of the Law Quarterly Review was published which included a Case Note I had written on Amaca v Ellis [2010] HCA 5. At some late point in the type-setting process a major typographical error was introduced on page 354 (which changed a figure that should have read “0.18 per cent”). The editor will be publishing an apology and correction in the October issue and the publisher has corrected the on-line version.

 

In my experience, however, most people still rely on the hard copy version. Since major asbestos litigation continues to work its way through the courts, I am anxious to do what I can to undo some of the effects of the publisher’s error.  To this end – and please excuse the liberty - I wanted to alert you and your students to the fact that the relevant sentence on page 354 should read:

“Though each contribution of fibre materially contributes to the risk of mesothelioma and some value might be put on each contribution to risk, say a 0.18 per cent risk due to an individual defendant’s tortious contribution of fibre and 1 per cent due to other sources, when a person exposed to both sources contracts the disease the question of whether this defendant’s tortious fibre was probably involved cannot be determined by comparing these risks and asking whether the tortious risk due to the individual defendant was double that of the other sources.”

 

The Note is relevant to 2 cases pending before the Supreme Court of the UK: Sienkiewicz and Willmore.

  

Best wishes

 

Jane Stapleton