James Hardie (27 July 1851 – 20 November 1920)[2] emigrated to Australia in 1888 from Linlithgow, Scotland, and established a business importing oils and animal hides.

[6] By the middle of the twentieth century, James Hardie had become the largest manufacturer and distributor of building products, insulation, pipes and brake linings containing asbestos.

[citation needed] In 1978 the effects of pleural abnormalities and other asbestos-related diseases were beginning to show up in the former mine workers.

Though some earlier claims had arisen, the proliferation of cases from the 1980s onwards forced James Hardie to acknowledge that it had known asbestos to be dangerous.

[23][24] In 1978 the company began putting warning labels on its products explaining that inhalation of the dust could result in cancer.

[30] After this separation, James Hardie moved offshore to the Netherlands for what it claimed were significant tax advantages for the company and its shareholders.

The courts were assured of this and that more money would be made available to its Australian asbestos victims through the issue of partly paid shares to MRCF obliging the new Dutch parent company to meet a call for funds if it were needed.

[citation needed] Shortly after the move, an actuarial report found that James Hardie asbestos liabilities were likely to reach $574 million.

[36] Amongst other findings, it found that the actuarial reports commissioned by James Hardie which estimated liabilities at $286 million were inadequate because they used a financial model which made unfounded predictions on the value of investments held by Amaca and Amaba, the figures were subject to numerous unspecified conditions and they did not account for the effect of separating Amaca and Amaba from James Hardie.

The details of the fund were to be legally determined by June 2005 but progress was stalled and the company refused to disclose the date the deal would be finalised.

[41] Further conflicts between the company and the federal government over tax deductibility of donations to the voluntary fund saw finalisation of the deal further delayed.

[43] The final step in giving the voluntary fund a legal structure was approval of the scheme by James Hardie shareholders.

[44] After the inquiry in 2004, prosecutors were considering bringing civil and criminal charges against the CEO and other senior executives for making fraudulent statements as to the liquidity of the MRCF.

[47] In 2009, the Supreme Court of New South Wales found that directors had misled the stock exchange in relation to James Hardie's ability to fund claims.

Former chief executive Peter Macdonald was banned for 15 years and fined $350,000 for his role in forming the MRCF and publicising it.

[50] In August 2019, Mathew Werfel, a DIY handyman from Adelaide, won $3 million in a compensation case against James Hardie.