VICTIMS of deadly asbestos were last night celebrating a landmark legal ruling freeing up billions of pounds worth of compensation.

Five law lords overturned a Court of Appeal ruling which had denied pay-outs to sufferers because they could not prove which of several employers was responsible for their illness.

The judgement is expected to cost insurers an estimated £8bn and was heralded by lawyers as the most significant decision in the history of industrial disease compensation.

It brings relief for thousands of victims and their families in the North-East, which has the highest rate of asbestos-related disease in the country, partly from its legacy of shipbuilding and steel-making.

Lawyers for the widows of two victims of mesothelioma - a lung cancer linked to asbestos - and a sufferer challenged High Court and Court of Appeal rulings that compensation could not be paid in a case where a worker was exposed to the deadly dust by more than one employer.

This meant companies could negligently expose workers to asbestos, but walk away without paying a penny in compensation.

Gillian Edwards, of Ingelby Barwick, near Yarm, has been fighting a claim on behalf of her husband Brian, who died three years ago from mesothelioma.

She said: "This is the first time ever a ruling like this has been made and it will mean a lot to a lot of people."

Mrs Edwards now hopes to win an expected £200,000 pay-out for her husband's death.

George Brumwell, general secretary of the building workers' union Ucatt and a former worker at the William Grange shipyard in Hartlepool, said: "This is terrific news - particularly for the many who have lost husbands, brothers and fathers.

"There isn't a family in any street in the North-East that isn't affected by the problem of asbestos disease."

The claims involved Judith Fairchild, from Leeds, widow of Arthur, who died from mesothelioma in 1996; 54-year-old sufferer Edwin Matthews, from Rochester, Kent; and Doreen Fox, the widow of Thomas Fox, from Liverpool.

Up to 1,000 people in the North-East are expected in the next year to die from asbestos-related diseases and, by 2010, nationally the annual figure is expected to be 10,000.

North Durham MP Kevan Jones said: "This rights what was clearly a gross injustice. The sad thing is that many hundreds in the North-East have died waiting for this day."

* The regional office of union Amicus, in Middlesbrough, has issued a helpline number for sufferers and claimants - (01642) 607902.