KEY POINTS:
Asbestos victims must have their condition assessed by the Accident Compensation Corporation or face missing out on lump-sum compensation, accident lawyer John Miller says.
The Wellington-based lawyer acted on behalf of the widows of three men who last year succeeded in getting a Court of Appeal judgment that ACC could not withhold lump-sum payments for the injuries their husbands suffered from working with the potentially lethal building material.
Mr Miller said with an estimated 270 people potentially eligible for lump sums - which ACC has estimated could total at least $150 million - some people faced missing out on money they were entitled to.
"You have to be assessed for a lump sum. If you suddenly find out you have asbestosis or something like that but then you die just before any assessment, you get zilch. There is an unfortunate gap there that is still happening.
"We encourage people, as soon as they think they have a claim they should be pressing ACC to have a lump-sum assessment. That's got to be done very quickly."
Mr Miller said publicity about the widows' case had seen several people approach his office to see if they were eligible for compensation. Because of the date of their injury many were entitled to only an independence allowance but those people were often still able to be helped in some way.
"What we are tending to find when we look at these files is that they could have claimed for a lot of things that ACC didn't pay for such as chemotherapy, before the claim was accepted.
"If it is clear that it is due to an ACC-covered injury, ACC should be paying for those. When these men were very ill, then their wives or others had to give up work to give them care. That again is something ACC should pay for. That often hasn't been picked up in claims."
An ACC spokesman said the corporation had been pro-active in making sure asbestos victims knew of their entitlement to compensation, and had advertised the details of eligibility for lump-sum payments in major newspapers. So long as an assessment was carried out ACC would pay compensation, even to estates, the spokesman said.
"ACC is absolutely in no way preventing people from getting what they should."
