Asbestos lawyers for mesothelioma and asbestos disease claims

Why asbestos disease appears decades later

Asbestos is a group of fibrous minerals which were used widely in Australian building products, insulation, pipe lagging, brake linings and industrial materials. Its use was phased down over decades, and it was banned nationally from 31 December 2003.

When asbestos-containing material is cut, drilled, sanded or broken, it releases fibres fine enough to be breathed deep into the lungs. The body cannot clear many of them. Over years, those fibres can scar lung tissue, thicken the pleura (the membrane lining the lungs and chest wall) and cause cancer.

The gap between exposure and diagnosis is long, commonly twenty to fifty years. By then the employer may have closed, the building may be gone and the people who worked beside you may be hard to find. These factors do not necessarily bar a claim or make it impossible to pursue, but that gap shapes almost everything about how an asbestos claim is run.

Common asbestos diseases that can support a compensation claim

• Mesothelioma. A cancer of the lining of the lung (pleura) or, less often, the abdomen (peritoneum), the heart lining (pericardium) or the testicular sac (tunica vaginalis testis). It is caused almost exclusively by asbestos, and there is no safe level of exposure, so even brief or low-level exposure can be enough to cause this disease.
• Asbestosis. Diffuse scarring (fibrosis) of the lung tissue, which reduces lung function over time. It generally follows heavier, longer exposure.
• Asbestos-related lung cancer. Lung cancer where asbestos exposure is a contributing cause. A smoking history does not by itself rule out a claim.
• Asbestos-related pleural disease. Including diffuse pleural thickening, where the pleura thickens and stiffens enough to restrict breathing.
• Other cancers. Asbestos exposure is also recognised as a cause of cancer of the larynx and ovary. These claims are less common and turn heavily on the medical evidence.

Pleural plaques alone generally are not compensable, because they do not usually cause impairment. They are still worth recording. Plaques are evidence of exposure, and that may matter if another condition develops later.

A claim for asbestosis or pleural disease does not need to wait until the condition is severe. A diagnosis that is causing symptoms, or is likely to, is enough to start the conversation.

Who can make an asbestos compensation claim

Asbestos exposure in Australia is not only a mining or factory story. Claims generally come from four groups.

Asbestos mining and milling. The original source of asbestos disease claims in this country.

Trades that worked with asbestos products. Carpenters, laggers, boilermakers, plumbers, electricians, fitters, mechanics, shipwrights and labourers who cut, drilled or handled asbestos materials as part of the job. Power stations, shipyards, railway workshops, refineries, sugar mills and building sites all feature.

Household and secondhand exposure. Partners and children of workers who brought dust home on their clothes, and people who grew up near a factory or mine.

Home renovation and in-situ exposure. People who cut fibro sheeting, pulled up vinyl flooring, removed an old fence or stripped out a bathroom. This group rarely thinks of itself as “exposed to asbestos”, so diagnoses are often never connected to a claim.

Veterans and Commonwealth employees can have additional entitlements through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or Comcare. Those run alongside any court claim against manufacturers or suppliers.

Why a diagnosis alone does not create a claim

A diagnosis of asbestos-related disease does not by itself create a right to compensation. A court claim is fault-based. It has to establish where the exposure happened, who was responsible for it, and whether they failed to take reasonable care at a time when the risk was known or ought to have been known.

The defendants are often several. A court claim for a dust-related condition can typically be brought against:

• Employers, where the exposure happened in the course of your work.
• Occupiers of property, where it happened on a site controlled by someone other than your employer.
• Manufacturers of the asbestos products involved.
• Suppliers, including importers and distributors who sold the products on.
• Government bodies, including state authorities, statutory corporations and councils, where they built, owned or maintained the premises or plant.

More than one of them is usually involved in the same claim, and each may have had a different insurer over the years.

The main manufacturers and suppliers of asbestos products in Australia were James Hardie and Coy Pty Ltd, Wunderlich Limited, Goliath Portland Cement Co Ltd and CSR, which also traded as Asbestos Products Pty Ltd, along with importers and distributors such as Bell’s Asbestos and Engineering. Between them they supplied fibro sheeting, roofing, pipes, insulation and board into nearly every part of Australian construction and industry. You do not need to know whose product you worked with, or be able to name a brand. That is worked out from your exposure history and from records of what was supplied to the sites and trades you worked in.

Other entitlements work differently:

• Where the exposure happened at work, a statutory workers’ compensation claim or a dust disease scheme claim may be available. These are no-fault, so negligence does not need to be proved.
• Where the condition means you can no longer work, a TPD claim through superannuation may also apply.

It is common for one person to have all three running at once. Working out which apply, and how each affects the others, is one of the first things to get right.

Asbestos compensation rules in each state

Every state and territory has its own time limits, courts and statutory schemes. The table below is a general summary. It is not a substitute for advice on your own history, particularly where exposure happened in more than one place.

A few points sit behind that table.

Time limits. Time limits vary from state to territory. Sometimes there are no time limits that apply to dust-related conditions. Other times there are strict time limits that apply. Typically the time limits run from the date the condition arose, or from knowledge of the disease, rather than from the date of exposure. Workers’ compensation statutory schemes and common law claims (court claims) each have their own lodgement rules and procedures. In Queensland, for example, a workers’ compensation claim is generally lodged within 6 months of diagnosis even though there is no limitation period at all on a court claim.

It is always best to investigate without delay. Any delay in investigating or pursuing a claim could compromise your rights.

Provisional damages. Ordinarily, a claim resolves once and for all. Provisional damages change that. They allow a person with asbestosis or pleural disease to be compensated now, while keeping the right to return for further damages if mesothelioma or lung cancer develops later. They are available in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. Victoria’s provision is the Asbestos Diseases Compensation Act 2008 (Vic), and Western Australia introduced them for asbestos and silica conditions from 1 December 2024. Queensland and the ACT do not generally allow them, and where they are not available the timing and value of a settlement matter more.

Statutory schemes. The workers’ compensation statutory schemes create a no-fault system of compensation for people who have developed a dust-related disease from employment, and for their dependants.

Which law applies. Generally, the law of the place where the exposure happened governs the claim, including its time limits, even if the claim is heard somewhere else. Where exposure happened in several states, choosing where to bring the claim is a real decision.

How mesothelioma compensation is worked out

People often search for an “average payout”. There is no meaningful average. Damages in a court claim are assessed individually, and they are built from separate parts.

• General damages. For pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and loss of life expectancy.
• Past and future loss of earnings. Including loss of superannuation, where the condition has cut short a working life.
• Medical, treatment and travel costs. Past and future, including immunotherapy or other treatment not fully covered by Medicare.
• Care. The cost of paid care and, in many cases, the value of care provided by family.
• Loss of the ability to care for others. In some jurisdictions, where you can no longer provide care you previously gave to a family member.

What drives the assessment is the diagnosis and prognosis, your age, your earnings, your family’s reliance on you and the care you need. A mesothelioma compensation claim is usually assessed differently from an asbestosis claim, because the prognosis is so different.

Statutory benefits are separate. Some are paid as lump sums or weekly amounts, and some must be repaid from a later court award. Medicare and Centrelink may also need to be repaid in part. A clear view of how these interact is part of advice before any settlement is accepted.

How an exposure history is rebuilt

Most people come to a first conversation unsure exactly where they were exposed. That is the usual starting point, and reconstructing it is the core of the work.

The work history

Employment records, superannuation and tax history, union records and apprenticeship papers show who you worked for, where and when. The recollection of people who worked beside you is often just as important, and it is sought early while it can still be obtained.

The products and the premises

Company records, product histories, building records and evidence from earlier litigation help show which asbestos products were present, and who manufactured, supplied or controlled them. Independent occupational hygiene evidence addresses how much exposure there was and what a careful employer or supplier should have done at the time.

The medical picture

Imaging, lung function testing, pathology and specialist respiratory or oncology opinion establish the diagnosis and its likely course. The medical evidence also has to connect the condition to the exposure.

When the company no longer exists

Many companies that made, supplied or used asbestos products have been wound up or absorbed into other businesses. Liability may still sit with an insurer, a successor entity, a compensation fund or a statutory scheme. Finding who stands behind a defunct company is part of the early work.

Claims by families and dependants

Family members often make the first enquiry, and that is entirely appropriate.

While the person is alive. A partner or adult child can make contact, gather documents and help with the history. The claim itself belongs to the person diagnosed.

If the person dies before the claim ends. The claim can generally continue through their estate. In some jurisdictions (for example Queensland and New South Wales), damages for pain and suffering can generally still be recovered if court proceedings were started before the person died. That is one reason the firm moves quickly to file a claim when someone is very unwell.

Dependants’ claims. People who depended on the person financially, or for services around the home, may have a separate claim of their own for the loss of that support. These claims arise under each state’s legislation, such as the Civil Proceedings Act 2011 (Qld) and the Compensation to Relatives Act 1897 (NSW).

Statutory death benefits. Where the disease came from work, workers’ compensation and dust disease schemes generally provide benefits to dependants, including in NSW through icare Dust Diseases Care.

Family members exposed themselves. A partner who washed dusty work clothes, or a child who played in a yard near asbestos, may have a claim in their own right if they are later diagnosed.

These matters are handled carefully and at the family’s pace.

Running a mesothelioma claim to a court hearing

Dust disease claimants are often seriously unwell, and that changes what a firm needs to be able to do. A matter may need to be listed quickly and run to a hearing on a compressed timetable. A person’s evidence may need to be recorded early, in hospital or at home, so it is preserved whatever happens. How a defendant approaches a claim is also shaped by whether the firm bringing it is prepared to take it to judgment.

Martin Rogalski, the firm’s principal, is a Queensland Law Society Accredited Specialist. He has run dust disease litigation since 2008, for asbestos exposure that occurred in every state and territory, and has also pursued claims in overseas jurisdictions including New Zealand. That work has run through the District and Supreme Courts of Queensland, the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the Dust Diseases Tribunal of New South Wales, and includes expedited trials, judge-alone and jury trials, and matters run to judgment and to the Court of Appeal in multiple jurisdictions.

Where an asbestos claim is brought

Claims against these types of defendants can be brought in different courts and tribunals depending on where you were exposed to asbestos.

Dust disease is the firm’s national specialty. Work histories rarely respect state borders, and a single claim can involve exposure in several states. The firm acts for people in every state and territory, and where someone is too unwell to travel, the firm travels to them.

• Asbestos and dust disease claims in New South Wales
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in Victoria
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in Western Australia
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in South Australia
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in Tasmania
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in the ACT
• Asbestos and dust disease claims in the Northern Territory

Claims are run for clients across Queensland too, from the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast to Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns.

The firm’s other claim types, such as workers’ compensation and CTP, are handled in Queensland only. Silica claims are run nationally in the same way as asbestos claims; see silicosis and silica disease claims.

How Rogalski Lawyers runs an asbestos claim

The firm keeps a low number of clients per solicitor. You have direct contact with the lawyer running your matter, by mobile phone and email, and you are told plainly where the claim stands at each stage.

Every claim is run no win, no fee*. The firm does not use litigation funders, so no third party takes a share of what is recovered. Legal costs can often be claimed in addition to compensation recovered, and interest is charged only on legal costs that remain unpaid. Disbursements, such as medical reports and court filing fees, are separate, and they are explained to you in writing before they are incurred.

Enquiries are generally returned the same business day. The first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If you or someone in your family has been diagnosed, you can request a free case review or call 1300 848 424.