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The High Court has judged that smoking should be considered as contributory negligence in the personal injury claim of a Devon man who died of asbestos-related cancer.
Mr Reg Badger, a boilermaker, had made the personal injury claim against the Ministry of Defence, his employers. It was ruled that both his contact with asbestos and his smoking were causative of his death in 2002.
Mr Badger started smoking in 1955, when the dangers of smoking were not known, but continued smoking after warnings were added to packets in 1971, and the judge commented that: "it was reasonably foreseeable by a reasonably prudent man that, if he smoked, he risked damaging his health."
However, a personal injury solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, Adrian Budgen, believes that many people are unaware that the combination of smoking and having been exposed to asbestos is particularly dangerous. Statistics show that people who both smoke and have had contact with asbestos have a 50 times greater chance of developing cancer than someone who has not had exposure to asbestos and who has not smoked.
Mr Budgen commented on the judgment: "It's an unhelpful precedent. It will result in reduced damages in a lot of cases. That's very sad and unfortunate."
This ruling means that the personal injury compensation Mr Badger’s widow, Beryl, is to receive will be reduced by 20% from 149,000 to 122,000.
