Top industrial diseases lawyer joins Leigh Day's personal injury team
Harminder Bains joins Leigh Day as a partner
Posted on 26 January 2012
Specialist personal injury law firm Leigh Day & Co have announced that leading industrial disease lawyer Harminder Bains has joined the firm as a partner.
Harminder qualified as a legal executive in 1993 and was made partner in 2010 at Field Fisher Waterhouse.
She has over 15 years' experience acting solely for victims of personal injury and asbestos disease. Harminder, an APIL Fellow, specialises in asbestos disease claims and has become one of the country’s leading lawyers against employers who have negligently exposed their workforce to harmful materials.
She has obtained the highest awards to date for general damages and care and assistance in cases of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs caused almost exclusively by exposure to asbestos.
She is also innovative in that she has obtained the first award of periodical payments for a dependent in a fatal claim and uniquely obtained the costs of alternative treatment including photodynamic therapy.
Harminder advises the Parliamentary Asbestos Committee and is active in lobbying the Government on numerous issues. She has also organised events, which have raised funds for mesothelioma research. To date, she has helped to raise £60,000.
Harminder has personal experience of the Cancer Mesothelioma as her own father, Hari Bains, died from the disease having been negligently exposed to asbestos whilst working in the engine rooms of ships at the Naval dockyard in Chatham, Kent.
Daniel Easton, head of the industrial diseases team at Leigh Day & Co said:
“We believe it is a real coup to have someone of Harminder’s reputation joining the firm. We have been working extremely hard to ensure our personal injury team is not only one of the most renowned but also the most well known in the UK. Harminder’s appointment can only strengthen the team.
Harminder said:
“I am delighted to be at Leigh Day & Co. As a claimant-only law firm I can continue to fight for the rights of people injured or killed from industrial diseases against organisations, such as the MoD, which spend hundreds of thousands of pounds each year defending claims even when it is clear that workers were exposed to asbestos and other hazardous materials.”