FED: Waterfront asbestos payout a first in NSW

AAP General News (Australia)
04-11-2000
FED: Waterfront asbestos payout a first in NSW

EDS: Clarifies that settlement is a first for NSW



By Natalie Davison, Industrial Reporter

SYDNEY, April 11 AAP - A $250,000 settlement for a New South Wales waterside worker
in an asbestos related damages case had opened the floodgates for hundreds of waterfront
workers to claim compensation, a union said today.

Maritime worker Joe Cachia had applied to the NSW Dust Diseases Tribunal claiming the
commonwealth authority for waterside safety, the Australian Stevedoring Industry and his
employer Patrick Stevedoring, had failed to warn of the dangers of asbestos and failed
to provide suitable respiratory protective equipment.

The case, which was settled out-of court yesterday, was the first time the Stevedoring
Finance Committee had contributed to the settlement of an asbestos claim for a waterfront
worker in NSW.

Mr Cachia's solicitor Lisa Lake said the win was an important step for asbestos-related
claims by all waterfront workers.

And she said another 20 waterside workers had filed asbestos-related disease cases in NSW courts.

Slater and Gordon solicitor Peter Gordon said one settlement against the Stevedoring
Finance Committee had been reached in Victoria, with up to 200 cases being filed in NSW,
Western Australia and Victoria.

Ms Lake said the waterfront was one of the last industries where workers had been unable
to claim damages as most workers were employed on a casual basis.

"It is very difficult to identify who they were working for on the days they unloaded
asbestos cargo," she said.

"Before 1967 that was the system, so anyone who contracted that asbestos disease working
on the waterfront before 1967 had trouble working out who they could bring the claim against."

Ms Lake said in November last year the High Court ruled in a separate case that the
Stevedoring Finance Committee was responsible for any liability of the Australia Stevedoring
Industry Authority.

In that case a worker had died from asbestos poisoning.

"We have been claiming in our statements of claim that the Australian Stevedoring Industry
Authority were negligent to these waterside workers," Ms Lake told AAP.

"The usefulness of being able to bring claims against the Australia Stevedoring Industry
Authority is that as the overriding authority, the High Court ruled it had a duty of care
to waterside workers ... that it had responsibility to their safety.

"It has not yet been determined whether they breached that duty, but this case has
come along in the middle of it and they've paid some money, so that's a breakthrough."

Maritime Union of Australia NSW central branch assistant secretary Barry Robson said
the settlement was part of a long struggle for justice for waterside workers.

"This is the first step towards a full acknowledgement that the Australia Stevedoring
Industry Authority must bear some burden of the responsibility for this catastrophe,"

he said.

AAP nd/sb/arb/bwl

KEYWORD: WATERFRONT ASBESTOS LEAD

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