The family of Dian Pond has been awarded more than $600,000 after a judge found she contracted a rare cancer by inhaling asbestos dust on her husband’s work clothes.
From 1962 to 1970, Mrs Pond’s husband David handled, installed and removed insulation and other materials brimming with asbestos while working for the NSW Department of Railways.
The cancerous dust and fibres would settle on Mr Pond’s clothes where they would be shaken off while his wife laundered the clothes in the family home.
In 2009, Mr Pond died from mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer caused by asbestos inhalation that usually affects the lungs.
Twelve years later Mrs Pond started developing shortness of breath.
“She had seen her husband die of the same condition,” Judge Wendy Strathdee wrote in her NSW Dust Diseases Tribunal judgment published on Friday.
“She had witnessed his suffering and knew what was ahead of her.”
Mrs Pond launched legal action against State of NSW in May 2022, four months before she died of mesothelioma.
On behalf of her mother, Mrs Pond’s daughter Davina Armitage continued the battle.
“Listening to her evidence, often through her tears, was heartbreaking,” the judge wrote.
“She was a woman placed in a terrible situation of having to care physically and emotionally for her mother who was dying of the same condition that caused her father’s death.”
Mrs Pond was no stranger to cancer.
In 1985 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, three decades later she had her thyroid removed after being diagnosed with cancer, and later the same year she had a small tumour on her lung removed.
But the mesothelioma diagnosis was different.
“You could see in her face she knew this was not something she could beat,” Ms Armitage told the court, recalling a video conference with Mrs Pond’s doctor confirming her diagnosis.
Unlike the previous cancers that Mrs Pond had experienced, there was no treatment.
“It is common knowledge that the suffering of a death from mesothelioma is painful and torturous. The symptoms proceed unabated and often unable to be controlled by medication,” Judge Strathdee wrote.
During the last months of her life Mrs Pond required care throughout the day and night, and would become highly anxious when left alone.
She stopped eating normally and was unable to complete everyday tasks, becoming short of breath while walking around the house.
Her pain was such that she was “swigging Ordine (an opioid painkiller) straight from the bottle.”
Though the state conceded their negligence led to Mrs Pond’s death, they believed the plaintiffs should have been awarded $360,000 rather than the $485,000 Ms Armitage was seeking.
However, Judge Strathdee believed Mrs Pond’s suffering was “magnified and exacerbated”.
“One can only imagine how she truly felt.
“She was the elder of the family, her husband having passed. Her mesothelioma was contracted from her late husband’s clothes, and she had watched him die from the same hideous disease.”
Mrs Pond’s family was awarded $605,296.32 with a future hearing to determine costs.
