South African asbestos claimants have accepted in principle mining group Gencor’s revised settlement offer, Gencor and the claimants’ lawyers announced on Monday.
Gencor said the claimants had met the Monday deadline imposed by it for the acceptance of the final amount — R460-million ‒ which Gencor offered to pay them without any admission of liability.
”Consensus has been reached as to how this amount will be allocated to settle both the English and South African litigation,” Gencor said in a statement.
Attorneys for the claimants, Ntuli Noble & Spoor Inc, formally notified Gencor’s attorneys on Monday afternoon that they had accepted the company’s offer in total.
However, they warned that although significant progress had been made between the parties in December last year, important issues remained to be discussed and agreed on.
”A settlement is therefore by no means certain, but the attorneys for the claimants are cautiously optimistic.”
Gencor said earlier in the day that the deadline was set to end delays in the negotiations which it said were delaying the unbundling of its stake in Impala Platinum.
It said that while all parties had agreed to the total amount due to potential claimants in December 2002, Gencor had revised the total offer marginally to accommodate the disagreements among lawyers for the claimants.
Lawyers first stepped in to prevent the unbundling of Gencor when an out-of-court settlement between them and British mining house Cape plc came unstuck.
Gencor was then targeted as it had taken over many of Cape plc’s South African assets when the Britons disinvested from the country in 1979.
The parties will resume discussions on Tuesday with a view to negotiating the remaining terms of a proposed settlement agreement.
Gencor said that should the negotiations be successful and a settlement agreement concluded, it would pave the way for Gencor’s unbundling to continue.
The unbundling timetable will be subject to and in accordance with JSE Securities Exchange regulations.
About 7 500 claimants are seeking compensation from the Gencor for ailments they contracted while working on or living near asbestos mines. – Sapa