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Leeds woman’s cancer fight prompts legal search
CANCER BATTLE: Sharon Walker, 45, who has mesothelioma, with her daughter Stephanie, 18.
Lawyers are hunting the insurers of a historic Leeds tailoring firm after a former seamstress contracted asbestos-linked cancer.
Benjamin Simon and Sons was part of Leeds’s booming clothing industry when the city was the world’s centre of tailoring.
The firm had a factory in Kirkstall Road and its name ranked alongside contemporaries such as Alexandre and Burton in the industry.
Sharon Walker (née Barr), 45, worked there as a seamstress from the age of 16 from 1981 to 1987 and came into contact with asbestos which was in common use in the tailoring industry.
In August, 2010, she was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lung caused by asbestos. The disease can take decades to show itself. Death usually occurs within 18 months of diagnosis, though some sufferers have lived for up to four years.
Benjamin Simon changed its name to Rushbeam in 1988. Rushbeam was dissolved as a company in 1999.
Mrs Walker is entitled to compensation, but solicitors Thompsons have been unable to trace the company’s insurers for the period when Mrs Walker worked there.
“From 1972 employers had a legal duty to hold Employers Liability Insurance but neither the employers nor the insurers were required to keep records of the policies and many have since been lost or destroyed,” said a spokesman for Thompsons.
Thompsons lawyers tracked down insurers covering other periods of the firm’s history, winning compensation for another employee.
Thompsons said: “However the insurer for the period when Mrs Walker worked from 1981 to 1987 remains untraced.”
Thompsons are calling for the setting up of a statutory body to pay compensation to asbestos victims who cannot trace their former employer’s insurers.
Mrs Walker is married and has an 18-year-old daughter.
She said: “It was a great shock to be diagnosed with a fatal cancer at 45. I feel overwhelming sadness that I won’t be here to see my daughter grow up. I was determined to claim compensation to ensure her financial security in the future. She plans to go to university and I was going to help her fund her studies.
“To be told that it is unlikely that I will ever receive a penny because my employer’s insurers couldn’t be traced was a double blow.”
Anyone who has any information about Benjamin Simon and Sons should contact Oliver Collett at Thompsons on 0113 205 6300.
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