Teresa Evans v The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

In a historic mesothelioma claim, the claimant must prove exposure to asbestos and breach of duty on the usual balance of probabilities. The court must not relax that standard because the disease is serious or its latency is long.

For foreseeability, the question is what a reasonable employer in the defendant’s position should have known at the relevant time, including developing knowledge of low-level asbestos risks. Guidance such as TDN13 is relevant but is not a universal or bright-line test. Causation still requires a material increase in risk; an exposure that is insignificant in comparison with other sources may be disregarded. Where the evidence cannot reliably establish exposure or its materiality, the claim fails.

Teresa Evans brought a damages claim as personal representative of Maria Drinkwater’s estate against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Mrs Drinkwater had worked at Bradwell Grove Hospital between approximately 1974/5 and 1986 and was alleged to have inhaled asbestos dust while refurbishment works were undertaken in the winter of 1975/6.

Liability and causation were disputed. The claimant relied principally on Mrs Drinkwater’s witness statement and occupational-hygiene evidence. The defendant disputed whether she had been exposed to asbestos, whether any exposure was material, and whether the works were conducted negligently. The central issues were whether exposure was proved, whether the defendant had breached its common-law duty of care, and whether any exposure materially increased the risk of mesothelioma.

1. Claim dismissed. The claimant did not prove on the balance of probabilities that Mrs Drinkwater had been exposed to any material amount of asbestos during the works.
2. The court approached the historic evidence cautiously. Memories reconstructed after several decades were tested against contemporaneous documents and the whole evidential picture. Mrs Drinkwater’s account of repeatedly encountering visible clouds of dust in the hospital corridor was not accepted. The evidence did not establish when asbestos work occurred, where it occurred, what precautions were used, or how close she was to it.
3. For foreseeability, the court adapted the two-stage approach in Bussey v 00654701 Ltd [2018] PIQR 248: whether the employer should have known that the exposure involved a significant, meaning real rather than fanciful, risk of asbestos-related injury; and, if so, whether proper precautions were taken. The relevant inquiry is what a reasonable employer in the defendant’s position should have known at the time.
4. The court held that by the winter of 1975/6 the defendant, as a public health authority and employer, should have known that even low-level asbestos exposure presented a significant risk. However, the claimant failed to prove that the defendant had omitted appropriate precautions. The absence of precautions from the specification did not justify an adverse inference, and the evidence did not show that general dust controls were ineffective against asbestos exposure.
5. Applying the causation principles summarised in Sienkiewicz v Greif (UK) Ltd [2011] 2 AC 229, the court found no significant possibility that any incremental exposure by the defendant caused the disease. Any such exposure was also insignificant compared with exposure from the husband’s work clothes. The claim was therefore dismissed.