Gravely ill dad's race against time
A gravely ill Wigan dad faces a race against time to win industrial compensation before he dies.
Painter Dennis Lowe, 54, who is battling terminal Mesothelioma, needs to find the insurers of two long-gone town centre companies he worked for to secure a financial future for his blind and disabled son Jonathan and daughter Katy.
Both building maintenance firms went out of business decades ago.
Dennis, a church warden at Appley Bridge All Saints, was diagnosed with the aggressive form of lung cancer in August.
He has already had radiotherapy treatment at The Christie and started chemotherapy at Wythenshaw hospital this week.
Now North West based specialist industrial injury lawyer Dominic Hemsi is appealing for any fellow ex workers who have any details of the former companies to contact him.
Mr Lowe worked at J G Lee and Co in Gower Street, Wigan from 1969 up until 1975, going on to work at W G Lloyd Decorators, in Sandbrook Road, Orrell, from 1975 until 1980.
Mr Hemsi, of Manchester-based McCool Patterson Hemsi who specialise in fighting for asbestosis victims said: "They were both large firms of painters and decorators.
"Mr Lowe was exposed as a teenager to asbestos while working for these companies and this has eventually led to his development of this dreadful terminal cancer.
"If I can find the insurers for these companies Mr Lowe's claim will succeed and his family and dependants will be compensated financially for his condition and Mr Lowe himself will be compensated himself if I manage to find the insurers during his lifetime."
Dennis, who is also a Boys Brigade volunteer, is the official carer for his 19-year-old son along with his wife Stella.
He is grateful for the help he is getting from the Greater Manchester Asbestosis Victims Support Group, but said: "I have had to retire because of the illness and its important to me that I can provide for
my family in the time to come.
Click next page for more ..."My solicitor is finding it very difficult to find the insurers of these firms because they haven't been in business for such a long time, one going into voluntary liquidation and the other being bought out and amalgamated with a another firm.
"If anybody, particularly past employees, know any details about them I hope that they will get in touch.
"It sounds a bit like a needle in a haystack really but I just hope something can be turned up.
"Both these companies were quite big firms. Lee's, who finished in 1980 or 81, had 30 or 40 or so employees and they maintained factories and schools, housing estates and the like.
"While Lloyds' were even bigger with their own plasters, electricians and joiners departments as well as the painters and decorators and I would say they finished in around about 1982."
He was forced to give up his job as a self-employed painter and decorator in July when he was taken ill.
Mr Lowe said: "As an apprentice I was sent on contracts for them all over the place. They were all dirty jobs and there was no such thing as health and safety, no masks and there were no warnings of the dangers of anything and you certainly weren't told that there was asbestos about.
"In my trade I was forever having to rub everything down and dusting, like pipework and other asbestos insulated services prior to painting them.
"The condition itself leaves me very short of breath and I am alright if I am on the level but walking on an incline is really difficult.
"I'm Jonathan's joint carer with my wife and I used to love to take him out socially but with this condition it is now very hard to manage that anymore.
"I have got legal statements from some of my old workmates about the conditions we had to work in and I have got a strong case, but we need to trace their insurers for this claim to succeed.
"But we are trying hard to maintain as much normality as we can."
Mr Hemsi can be contacted on 0161 828 8091.
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Thursday 02 September 2010
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