Armley asbestos disaster
On 20 July 1982, Yorkshire Television broadcast the documentary "Alice - A Fight For Life", predominantly the story of Alice Jefferson, who had worked at the Acre Mill asbestos factory in Hebden Bridge for just nine months when she was 17 years old. Thirty years later she was diagnosed with mesothelioma and given only six months to live. The documentary was also an "exposé on the workings of the asbestos industry." Its broadcast resulted in £60 million being knocked off T&N's share price overnight, headlines in the national newspapers, and the setting up of a government enquiry. Within ten days the government had halved the legal limit for asbestos dust in the workplace. In 1988 Yorkshire Television picked up the "Yorkshire Evening Post" story and produced a second critical investigation focusing on the pattern of deaths in Armley, and contradicting the government's reasons for refusing an inquiry. Called "Too Close to Home", it was broadcast as part of the "First Tuesday" documentary series on 6 December 1988.
Armley asbestos disaster
The appeal was dismissed on 2 April 1996, and permission to appeal to the House of Lords was refused. Lord Justice Russell rejected T&N's claim that they could not have known of the dangers before 1933 and said: "The true date was much earlier, certainly long before Mr Margereson's birth date [1925]. His activities as a child, therefore, as well as Mrs Hancock's, were at a time when the defendants were on actual or constructive notice as to the potential pulmonary damage that exposure to asbestos dust could bring about."