Film widow gets £160,000 payout

7:00pm Thursday 31st January 2008

A WIDOW has received nearly £160,000 in compensation for the asbestos-related cancer that killed her husband.

Carpenter Michael Scoble had a 30-year career in the film and TV industry working on movie classics such as Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, the original Casino Royale with David Niven, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Zhivago.

As a "chippy" he made scenery and props for the films, both on location and at Elstree Studios in London.

He and his wife Marilyn moved to Dorset in 1993 where he worked for a plastics firm in Poole before planning their retirement.

The same week as he retired, he found out he had an asbestos-related disease.

His heath went quickly downhill, and he died aged 66 on February 2006, the year he would have celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary.

Mrs Scoble fulfilled her husband's dying wish to continue the court case he started, taking the insurer of one of his previous firms, Cannon Film Productions, to the High Court in London.

The company settled before the case opened and Mrs Scoble this week received the final payment from the out-of-court settlement.

Mrs Scoble, of West Moors, said no amount of money could bring her husband back, but the settlement had exceeded her expectations.

She said she had expected to spend at least 20 years with her husband after he retired: "We had planned to get a motor home and travel."

Mrs Scoble's lawyer, Pauline Chandler from Manchester law firm Pannone, which specialises in industrial disease cases, said the settlement was a "reasonable result".

She added: "He was exposed to asbestos at all of the companies, but because he suffered from mesothelioma we were able to only take on one employer."