A Nottingham Tale

[peterbirks]

A great court case in QBE's Technical Claims Briefing today.

A police driver in Nottingham city centre had hit a 16-year-old girl while the driver was answering an emergency call late on a Saturday night. The girl, who witnesses said had been drinking, walked into the road and was struck at between 45 and 50 mph. She suffered head injuries and the claim against the police force's insurer was likely to be a high one.

The lower court said that the driver had been keeping a proper lookout, and so ascribed 75% contributory negligence to the victim.

The claimant appealed, and the Appeal Court noted that, although the police driver had been keeping a proper lookout, the correct procedure for police drivers answering emergency calls entailed taking account of road conditions and the distance to be travelled to reach the emergency.

The appeal court judge said that, since the policeman was driving late on a Saturday night in Nottingham city centre, the requirement to "take account of road conditions" included allowing for drunks walking into the middle of the road without warning, which, the judge said "was to be expected".

He reduced the victim's contributory negligence from 75% to 30% for this reason, which I reckon cost the insurers somewhere north of £400k.

PJ

Marvellous.

Comments

[bryangb.livejournal.com]

The mind boggles.

[miltonkeynesman.livejournal.com]

Peter - good story. I've had a dislike of the legal profession over many years for both their methods of charging and their generally blinkered (or is it privileged) disdain for the ordinary fellow. I do quite a lot of community mediation and the whole basis of mediation is that you help the parties work out for themselves what they want. Ideally both get something positive out of it, they understand each other's situation better and they can potentially resolve other matters for themselves going forward. We come across solicitors who claim to "mediate" but the vast majority of them cant be impartial, they want to take sides and have a winner, oh and yes they want to charge a goodly fee for doing that.

I guess my point is that many of them are far away from the "Man on the Clapham Omnibus" and live in their own sphere. There was a similar situation to the one you described in our local paper last week. Sadly a youngster had been knocked down and killed locally when walking in the middle of the road on the way home from a night out (not sure of his condition prior to the accident). The Council had turned out the street lights as part of their cost savings and according to experts it meant the driver had a lot less good chance of seeing the lad in the road. Now whatever else has gone here - and your views on street lighting policy might influence you a bit - it does seem to me that if you do walk across or along any main road late at night and particularly if your senses are dulled, then quite a lot of the onus and responsibility ought to be upon you. And whether the driver was at fault in any way or not, he/she is likely to be affected by your actions for a fair time.

Anyway hope all is well. Didnt see you blog about Napoloeon. I hope it was as good as you wanted - and as good as I think it was in London all those years ago. Cheers Richard