Anthony Richardson worked as a live-in maintenance man at the Royal Lytham and St Annes Golf Club from 1987 until 2002.

But he was to enjoy less than three years of his retirement and died in February 2005 of asbestos-related lung cancer, age 67.
Now his widow Pauline has been handed a £118,610 pay-out after High Court Judge Mrs Justice Swift ruled he had been exposed to the deadly fibres during his employment with a Lytham-based plumbing and heating engineering firm.

Mr Richardson was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lungs, notorious for its slowness to develop and the agony suffered by its victims.

Mrs Richardson, testified at the High Court, along with her son Paul, and her evidence was described as "patently honest" by the judge.

But although Mrs Richardson claimed her husband had been exposed to asbestos in the golf club's boiler rooms, and during installation of a new heating system in the 1980s, the judge said experts were agreed that could not have caused the mesothelioma that killed him.

Terrible

Instead she ruled the disease was the terrible legacy of his work, between 1975 and 1987, as a plumber and heating engineer, for the small Lytham-based firm, GF Russell, now Russells on Saltcotes Road.

In her ruling the judge described how Pauline and Paul Richardson had, on February 3, 2005, been told by a consultant that Mr Richardson had mesothelioma and had only a very short time to live.

They went to the hospice where he was being cared for to deliver the dreadful news and, when they asked him, he said he had been exposed to asbestos whilst working for GF Russell and another firm which had employed him in the 1970s.

During the two-day hearing GF Russell denied liability but the judge ruled, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Richardson had "frequently encountered asbestos-based materials" in airing cupboards and bath panels while working for the firm.

The firm, which employs six people, was ordered to pay Mr Richardson's widow £118,610 compensation for his death and now also faces substantial legal costs bills.

The company did not wish to make a comment.