August 18th, 2005

The compensation trust for James Hardie Industries has paid out a quarter of a million dollars to the widow of a California man that died after working at the Los Angeles factory that distributed James Hardie’s asbestos products. This is the first successful claim against James Hardie outside of Australia and New Zealand, and the trial was dealt with in a California court.

It is thought that the success of this case could be the start of many other similar claims against the company by people in the United States. The quarter of a million was paid out for wrongful death of Don Lee Henderson, who died in 2002 after working at the California distributor. There are also another couple of cases pending against James Hardie by US plaintiffs.

Mr. Henderson worked at Industrial Building Materials Inc, which sold and installed a number of asbestos products imported from James Hardie. The company did this between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Henderson had already won an award of around $11 million in the past from another asbestos company. However, the company went into bankruptcy and therefore no award was ever paid out.