Commercial Diver Respiratory Issues

[NorthSea]

Hello, will try to be as concise as possible:

I am enquiring on behalf of my Dad. He worked as a commercial diver during the 1980s, primarily saturation diving. Since leaving diving in the early 1990s he has had ongoing respiratory issues. He was initially diagnosed with asthma but as of last week now has a diagnosis of small airways disease. He has never smoked and did not have respiratory issues before his diving career.

We strongly believe as a family that his respiratory disease has been cause by his many years saturation diving. There are several research articles showing an association between saturation diving and small airways disease.

I have tried contacting a couple of solicitors to see if my Dad would be entitled to any compensation, but they don't understand what we are talking about as they have no knowledge of small airways disease or what saturation diving is/entails.

Does anyone have any advice/opinions?

Thanks in advance

[ostell]

Duplicate thread

[ULA]

I'll post on this thread although I appreciate you have a duplicate under personal injury.

I think that potentially your father should be making an industrial injury / disease claims which refers to any injury, disability or disease that can be directly attributed to an individual’s working environment and was due to some form of negligence.

There is a time limit even for industrial disease claims which, because of the nature of most industrial diseases is such that it could take several years for the illness to develop or for the symptoms to manifest, as potentially in the case of your father. However time limit is that court proceeding do need to commence within 3 years of the date of knowledge of the injury/disease.

Couple of things I believe also need to be proven is that your father needs to have been employed not self-employed and he needed to be working in England, Scotland or Wales or in this case I presume the shore off these countries otherwise he may not be able to consider a claim.

This is really not my area of expertise but may have given you some pointers. It may also help in your search of a solicitor as I think you should look for one that deals specifically with industrial injury / disease claims rather than general personal injury claims. What springs to mind is the whole asbestos and association with mesothelioma which came to light years after someone's exposure.

[NorthSea]

Many thanks for replying. I did try to delete the employment law original post but couldn't work out how to do it. He was employed by different companies for different lengths of time. There are 4 main companies he worked for and he has proof he was employed by them (I have the names of them but thought it best not to post them publibly). He did work around the world but primarily in the North Sea from both Scotland and Norway.

"What springs to mind is the whole asbestos and association with mesothelioma which came to light years after someone's exposure."
^This is the kind of case we were thinking it might be similar to.

[ULA]

I think you probably need a specialist solicitor maybe a firm that has dealt with mesothelioma linked to asbestos cases in the past. I could carry on doing some research for you but it would not be based on any knowledge I have of dealing with a case like this.