Frank Brownsett was an expert in textile machinery known to have been active in the Lancashire area c 1960. He was an engineer employed by The Shirley Institute, a research foundation established by the cotton industry. Brownsett was a frequent expert witness in court, invited by solicitors' firms to testify about textile machinery and working practices in the textile industry in order to support industrial injury claims. He had particular expertise in the management and removal of cotton dust, and was therefore called upon to testify in cases of Byssinosis.

John Pickering was a solictor known to have been active in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool in the the 1980s and 1990s, working at the firm John Pickering and Partners which he established in 1979 in Oldham. He specialised in compensation claims for industrial diseases, such as asbestosis and byssinosis, or brown lung. Pickering retired in 2004. His firm continued to operate under the name The Asbestos Law Partnership (or 'The ALP').