Injury compensation and the importance of the Civil Partnership Act

A recent conversation with a friend of the family helped bring home to me just how important the Civil Partnership Act has been in ensuring that those who are in same-sex relationships receive the same level of entitlement to injury compensation as those in traditional mixed-sex marriages.

Kerry (I have not used her real name) lost her lifelong lesbian partner to an asbestos-related illness in the winter of 1989. Although Kerry's partner had never worked in one of the conspicuously asbestos-reliant industries, she had spent the best part of six decades working in schools around the UK, where there would typically been some level of asbestos threat.

Tragically for Kerry, not only did she have to deal with the pain and grief caused by the bereavement of her friend and lover, she was also forced to endure years of financial uncertainty as a result of her death, having been dependent on her for over twenty years. This was down to the fact that at the time she was unable to find a personal injury solicitor to take on her compensation claim, something that nowadays would have been supported by the coroner's verdict: death by mesothelioma.

Although the issue remains controversial with some religious groups, the Civil Partnership Act, which was adopted in 2004, has, together with the Human Rights Act of 1999, worked to protect the interests of people like Kerry who lose their partners to accidents or illnesses caused by other parties.

This was in no small part made possible by a Law Commission report into the matter in 1999, which found that the "law arbitrarily excludes from an entitlement to claim compensation for financial loss some people who were financially dependent on the deceased."

It also described the law as it stood at the time as "discriminatory" and said that the government should introduce reforms "to remove the anomaly" in the injury compensation process, as, thankfully, they now have done.

These three steps are the reason that the law no longer interprets the stipulation regarding "husband and wife" contained within the Fatal Accidents Act as applying only to a man and woman.

One of the first injury compensation claims to test the efficacy of the new laws occurred in 2008, when the bereaved gay partner of a man killed in a motorcycle accident won £30,000 damages.

Following the court's ruling on the case, the claimant's no win, no fee solicitor confirmed the importance of the decision: "We were always confident that the court would come to the correct decision and the settlement represents a proper court outcome. "The simple fact is that the Fatal Accidents Act, until the Civil Partnership Act, discriminated against same gender couples. "However, we've now established that for those with a potential claim from between 1999 and 2004, there is at least some hope."

Yes, thankfully there is now hope; if only there had been some for Kerry.


Can I claim?