University pays out to mesothelioma victim

Cambridge University has paid out compensation to a man with terminal mesothelioma.

Bob Murphy, who worked as a carpenter in the university’s estates department between 1989 and 2006, said that he had been given insufficient protection and has succeeded in a claim against the university. He said that the only protection he had been given had been a paper mask and a special hoover. The university has denied liability and stressed that the compensation agreed with Mr Murphy was not an admission of negligence.

The payout comes in the light of a recent investigation into other breaches related to the university’s handling of asbestos, in particular during the building of the new £4m Kavli Institute for Cosmology, where workmen demolished an asbestos concrete barn without suitable protection. The university blamed the construction company for the negligence and said that since that incident all its asbestos management procedures have been revised. The Health and Safety Executive confirmed that there had been shortcomings in the way the barn demolition had been carried out but there had been no prosecutions resulting from the incident.