Driver's wife claim rejected
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• A truck driver's wife who claimed to have contracted lead poisoning after cleaning toxic waste from her husband's overalls, has lost a High Court bid for damages.
Stella Hewett refused to sign a formal offer of 225,000 damages before the trial and will now get nothing. The court found no evidence that her husband David had suffered any "significant exposure" to lead dust, ruling that although Mrs Hewett's illness was a result of cleaning her husband's work clothes, no blame could be laid on his employers, All Browns Transport of Sandwich (now Brown & Mason) and construction giant Wimpey.
Stella Hewett, of Margate, claimed that when her husband returned from work, she regularly cleaned dirt, including lead dust, from his overalls and boots.
She began to suffer bouts of tiredness, severe abdominal pain and vomiting in March 1982, and a year later lead poisoning was diagnosed. In the early 1980s David Hewett had been working on an "unusual demolition contract" at a gas works in Bromley-by-Bow, the court heard.