However, despite having lost the case, the level of compensation Eternit will have to pay the family has been slashed from 250,000 to 25,000 euros. Eternit can still lodge an appeal with the Court of Cassation.

The company was first sentenced to pay 250,000 euro in compensation by a court in Brussels in 2011 in a case brought by the family of Françoise Jonckheere who died of pleural cancer in 2000.

This form of cancer is often caused by exposure to asbestos.

Mrs Jonckheere’s husband worked at the Eternit factory all his life. He died of pleural cancer in 1987. When Mrs Jonckheere died of the same form of cancer in 2000 her family decided to take the company to court.

At the initial case the court rule that Eternit had been at fault as it had continued to use asbestos and to play down the risks involved in working with asbestos even though it was known that it could asbestosis and pleural cancer.

Eternit appealed claiming that previously the dangers of asbestos were not clear. This was despite the judge at the first trial having dismissed these claims.