I am a solicitor in the Asbestos Disease Litigation Team in Irwin Mitchell’s Birmingham Office.  My blog follows two mesothelioma suffers ‘William’ and ‘John’ through the compensation process to show how claims work and to highlight some issues which commonly arise.

In my last blog I talked about obtaining medical evidence in John & Williams cases.  I explained that we needed evidence from the expert Doctor to confirm that their illness was indeed a mesothelioma and whether it was related to exposure to asbestos at work. 

The other issue that the expert Doctor had to comment on in both cases is the loss of their statistically anticipated life expectancy.  The issue of loss of life expectancy is one of the hardest issues to deal with in a claim.  Unfortunately, however distressing the topic may be to discuss, legally the loss of life and anticipated life expectancy is a crucial factor in calculating the level of financial losses awarded to Claimants, I will explain more about this in a future blog.

In order to determine the loss of life expectancy the expert Doctor looked at both John & Williams’ medical records.  John was an extremely fit man before his illness and the expert Doctor felt that had he not developed mesothelioma, he would have probably have enjoyed a life expectancy which was at least that of a normal man of his age, if not longer.  William had heart problems so the expert felt that, on average, he was slightly less likely to enjoy a normal life expectancy.  The actual number of years the life expectancy is calculated from the statistics prepared by the Government for life expectancy for the general population.

Whilst loss of life expectancy is a crucial issue in calculating the financial losses it is something that I always shield my clients from as far as possible.  Although this issues is crucial to a claim, it does not mean I had to talk John and William through the experts view of life expectancy.  After all, my job is to help my clients through the compensation process in a way that is as easy and comfortable for them as possible.