Disease law

Occupational ill-health and disease cost the UK £10.6bn in terms of financial cost (loss of production, increased health costs) and human cost (impact on quality of life of the employee and their families). Disease and illness claims, whether long-tail or short-tail, can have considerable impact on employers who may be faced with direct liability for gaps in insurance cover or are tasked with seeking out evidence, documents and witnesses for processes and factories that no longer exist.

Whether it’s dealing with a flood of low value but complex cases on causation and breach of duty, such as NIHL, through to complex historic cases such as asbestos-related diseases and workplace stress claims, our team will help you to make a decision on the right liability response at the pre-litigation stage and effectively manage the post-litigation process to a successful resolution.

Our industrial disease team works with insurers, TPAs, local authorities, public bodies, manufacturing and the leisure industry. The team provides practical advice, grounded in an in-depth knowledge of the issues, our clients and the sectors in which they operate.

We handle the entire range of disease claims at the pre- and post-litigation stages, from requests for personal data to attending inquests, involving various diseases, from NIHL to bladder cancer. We frequently advise on the strategic management of a portfolio of historic claims, where evidence, witnesses, documents or insurance history may not be readily discoverable or accessible.

Our specialist teams across our offices provide clear advice and apply a strategic approach to ensure that lessons are learned, reducing the risk of future claims and to improve defensibility of any claim which may follow.

What we do...

• Asbestos-related disease - causation, foreseeability of risk against standards of the day, evidence collation and retention.
• NIHL - effective retention of generic documents from noise surveys, to training and awareness documentation. We use an online NIHL tool which assists the expert handler to determine hearing thresholds/losses against established criteria.
• Hand arm vibration - handling multi-party claims where foreseeability of risk over the passage of time is of key importance against an understanding of changing HSE guidance, industry standards and legislation.
• Other complex case expertise – including work-related upper limb disorder, dermatitis and respiratory claims such as occupational asthma.
• Stress and bullying at work claims - managing witnesses who may be feeling vulnerable by keeping them fully appraised of the legal process. Providing grievance investigation training to HR professionals.
• Document collation and retention – including dealing with committee reports, archives, storage and documenting to establish an easily accessible reference for future use, ensuring efficient claims handling.
• Insurance and liabilities tracing – with particular reference to public bodies and local authorities where the responsibilities for services change to different organisations following government restructuring of boundaries.
• Training and updates - through our EL/PL and Claims Clubs throughout the year. We also produce a quarterly providing insight from specialist experts, barristers and our team on a range of cases and topics of relevance to the arena.
• Limitation and legacy claim handling.