April 8, 2015
Family of Asbestos Victim Wins Supreme Court Trial
As a child in the 1950s, Marian Ciopicz and his friends frequently played in asbestos waste at the back of the Wunderlich asbestos factory in Sunshine, Melbourne.
As a child in the 1950s, Marian Ciopicz and his friends frequently played in asbestos waste at the back of the Wunderlich asbestos factory in Sunshine, Melbourne.
Many years later Mr Ciopicz developed asbestosis as a result of those childhood games and after battling asbestosis for two years he died in October 2014.
Wunderlich denied the compensation claim brought by Mr Ciopicz and, later, his family. But after a hard fought Supreme Court trial, a jury awarded the Ciopicz family $467,000 in damages in 2015.
Lawyers Michael Magazanik and Grace Wilson (now of Rightside Legal, then at Slater & Gordon) represented the Ciopicz family. It was the first asbestosis claim in Victoria to go to a jury verdict in a decade.