Litigation
In December 2004, James Hardie, the corporation that dominated the cement building products industry in Australia throughout the 20th century, agreed to a $1.5 billion deal to compensate people who had contracted an asbestos disease as a consequence of handling a Hardie product. In February 2007, the deal was finalised when Hardie increased its offer to $4.5 billion. This fund marks a landmark compensation deal in Australia.Four years later, in September 2008, civil action brought by the Australian corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), against 10 former James Hardie company directors and executives began in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Former Hardie chief executive officer Peter Macdonald, former chairwoman Meredith Hellicar, and former chief financial officer Peter Shafron are among those being sued by ASIC for breaching corporate disclosure rules.
In Western Australia, the state with highest incidence of asbestos disease in the country (and the highest known incidence in the world), people suffering from asbestos-induced diseases first took their fight for compensation to the Supreme Court of Western Australia in the late 1970s. Many of the plaintiffs had worked in asbestos mining and manufacturing industries, and it took more than a decade before they began to win cases.
The Supreme Court of Western Australia,scene of many asbestos compensation cases