Elderly widow may have to sell home to pay back ACC

The family of Auckland widow Dawn Lehmann says she may have to sell her home if the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) insists she repays a lump sum payment.

Dawn Lehmann, 80, was paid $97,000 as a lump sum payment after her husband Ross, a welder for most of his working life, died in November, 2003, from asbestos related lung cancer.

However, ACC took the case to court arguing the law did not allow it to make lump sum payouts to people exposed to asbestos before April, 2002.

The High Court agreed and said she was not entitled to a lump sum payment for her husband's death but was entitled to a lifetime payment of $67 a week.

Mrs Lehmann had planned to appeal that in the Court of Appeal but her son John said today she had enough and could not afford the legal fight.

He said she had spent most of the money - believing it was her entitlement - on huge legal bills, a new car, a cataract operation and hearing aids.

He said his mother now believed she would have to sell the family home if ACC demanded the money back.

"It is in the back of her mind. She knows the house is going.

"You are dealing with pretty much a cold type of organisation. They don't care."

Mr Lehmann said he had written to Prime Minister Helen Clark and ACC minister Ruth Dyson asking for a clarification of the law which was not clear on lump sum payments and which meant judges had to guess what it meant.

He said his mother believed the ACC was fighting over the bones of her dead husband.

"As she said for them to be fighting over my father's ashes is deplorable."

He said the payment had been made to her and she believed she was entitled to it for her husband's death.

Mr Lehmann said his mother had had to deal with the major emotional upheaval of her husband's death after 50 years of marriage on top of the trauma and stress of a legal fight.

"She just wants it over.

"The other disturbing aspect is that there is compensation for criminals and why the hell aren't our elderly people being looked after.

"What we are witnessing here is absolutely inhumane."

The ACC said earlier this week it was holding back on moves to recover asbestos-related lump sum payments until after the Lehmann appeal was known.

ACC had filed 19 district court appeals against payments to asbestos sufferers but had deferred the question of whether to seek the return of payments until after the Lehmann appeal, which now would not go ahead.

ACC spokesman Richard Braddell said the organisation had not yet had formal notification that the appeal had been dropped and he could not respond to the Lehmann family's statements at this time.

Mr Braddell said ACC had always believed its position was correct and it would be a matter for the board to decide how to proceed if and when it got notification the appeal had been dropped.

Wellington lawyer Hazel Armstrong, who is acting for Mr Lehmann's estate and nine other lump sum recipients, said 26 workers had been awarded lump sum payments worth more than $2.5 million.

- NZPA