A lawyer for the couple who successfully sued a law firm for negligence after it advised them in the sale of a Mr Fluffy home said it was possible, but not likely, there would be similar suits to follow.
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The couple’s solicitor John Harris, of O’Connor Harris, also said on Thursday that any possible claims would likely be limited to people who bought their property between about 2007 and 2014.
That is the years after the ACT government started warning the public of the possible ongoing risks of asbestos, but before the government-funded buyback.
In a judgment published Wednesday, the ACT Supreme Court found the firm Meyer Vandenberg was negligent and ordered it pay Karen McLennan and Andrew Spong nearly $40,000.
They had bought the Griffith home in 2009 and hired the firm to advise them on the sale.
When they met with the firm’s conveyancing clerk to discuss the contract, the clerk pointed to a fact sheet about asbestos being hazardous and asked them to read it.
The clerk then pointed to a removal certificate, which the couple skim read.
That document was dated August 1993 and said in fine print that residual fibres may still be present in the wall of the building and that approval was needed for any work on the walls.
In 2014 they discovered there were loose fill asbestos fibres in the house above a hallway cupboard, where the children stored their sport equipment and school bags.
They moved out of the home and sued the firm for damages in negligence, breach of contact and misleading and deceptive conduct, though that last claim failed.
In Wednesday's judgment, Associate Justice Verity McWilliam found the firm had been negligent and breached its contract by failing to properly advise the clients in relation to the contract for sale.
The sale was at a time when the risks of asbestos were already known.
What the firm should have done, the judgment said, was to properly explain to the couple what the risks and consequences were of buying the house to allow them to make an informed decision.
The asbestos information in the contract required someone to properly explain to the couple exactly what the risks and consequences were, to allow them to make an informed decision, she said.
Associate Justice McWilliam awarded the couple $37,638.34 in damages for asbestos investigation, rent, relocation and holding costs.
But the total damages were limited in part by the government buyback scheme, which restored the couple back to the same position they were before the purchase, the associate judge found.
"The buy-back of the Griffith property was a superseding event that broke the chain in causation from that date," Associate Justice McWilliam said.
"The intervention of the ACT Government ... had the effect of entirely mitigating any ongoing or further loss the plaintiffs may have suffered in entering into the initial conveyance."
What a solicitor is expected to raise when advising people on the purchase of a house is always a live issue.
But Mr Harris said that lawyers would not be expected to advise on what is not known at the time.
If for example the couple had bought the home some 20 years earlier, the lawyers would not have been expected to advise them in relation to asbestos, he said.
Amosite asbestos was pumped into more than 1000 Canberra homes in the 1960s and 1970s.
But many more than the 1000 households could have been affected by the Mr Fluffy legacy.
The Canberra Times reported in 2014 that the 1000 odd homes have sold at least 1600 times since 1992 as the clean-up program was drawing to a close.
The sales data shows some homes have changed hands five or six times in the period.
