Court of Appeal upholds 1976 law regarding damages awards for claimants not wearing seatbelts
03 Mar 2010
A long awaited decision from the Court of Appeal in the case of Stanton v Collinson has reaffirmed the position of Froom v Butcher [1976] 1 QB 286 regarding the reduction of compensation where a claimant fails to wear a seatbelt.
The claimant in Stanton v Collinson, a front seat passenger in the defendant's car, suffered serious brain injury in a road traffic accident in which the defendant driver was killed . The claimant was not wearing a seat belt and was sharing the front passenger seat with a second person.
The defendant's insurers accepted primary liability for the accident but argued that the amount of the award should be reduced by more than the conventional 25% established by the Court of Appeal in Froom v Butcher because the claimant was not wearing a seatbelt and was sharing the front seat.
Lord Denning's guidelines in Froom however, allow for a 25% discount where the injury would likely have been prevented altogether , but only 15% where there might have been a head injury suffered in any event which was the case here. (Although, the decision of Mrs Justice Cox, which was upheld by the Court of Appeal, was that the claimant in this case should not have his damages reduced at all because the defendant failed to prove that his injuries would have been reduced to a considerable extent by the use of the seatbelt.)
Lord Justice Hughes rejected the defendant's argument. He said:
"There may, I accept, be unusual cases in which the two brackets of finding contemplated by Froom v Butcher are neither appropriate. But the Act requires that the reduction for contributory negligence shall be such as appears to the court to be just and equitable. It therefore permits an approach such as adopted in Froom v Butcher based upon two broad categories of typical case and the general proposition that, absent something exceptional, there should be no reduction in a case where the injury would not have been reduced "to a considerable extent" by the seat belt." Para 26
Barrister Simon Dyer from Cloisters said:
"The defendant challenged whether guidelines which have withstood repeated scrutiny by the courts over the past three decades were still appropriate some 30 years later, developed as they were, at a time when society had very different attitudes towards seat belt usage, and they were not yet compulsory. A number of decisions suggested that the Courts might move towards raising the percentage reductions where contributory negligence has been proved.
"This decision however, reaffirms the guidelines set out down by Lord Denning which have done so much to provide certainty and in so doing assisted parties to settle claims where possible. This reaffirmation of the appropriateness of those guidelines means that there will probably be very little change in these thresholds over the next 20 to 30 years which was welcomed by Lord Justice Hughes as being in the 'public interest'." (1)
Significant also is that on the facts of this particular case Lord Justice Hughes also ruled that the defendant had not proven the causal link between the failure to wear a seat belt and the severity of injuries sustained. This Claimant suffered a very severe brain injury with serious ongoing consequences, yet the Defendant did not seek to rely on any medical evidence to establish that the quality of his injuries and the permanent adverse effect on his life would have been considerably lessened had he been wearing his seatbelt. The defendant relied instead exclusively on an engineering seatbelt expert who the court found was not in a position to comment on the complexities of the medical outcome
Lord Justice Hughes said:
"On the facts of this case, I conclude, despite Mr Turner's persuasive arguments, that the judge was entitled to say that the experts' evidence, combining the written and the oral, left her unable to say that the causation leg was proved on the balance of probabilities, and that medical evidence was required to resolve the uncertainties."
Simon Dyer from Cloisters added:
"This case is a useful reminder to practitioners that the onus is well and truly on the defendant to prove the causal link between the failure to wear a seat belt and the severity of injuries sustained, and that in those cases of severe and complex injury, causation will only be appropriately determined by medical experts."
Notes
1. Lord Justice Hughes reminded us 'that there is a powerful public interest in there being no such enquiry into fine degrees of contributory negligence, so that the vast majority of cases can be settled according to a well-understood formula and those few which entail trial do not mushroom out of control. Froom v Butcher so states, and is binding'"
2. Mr Frank Burton QC and Ms Yvette Genn (instructed by Irwin Mitchell ) acted for the respondent; Mr Mark Turner QC (instructed by Berrymans Lace Mawer ) acted for the Appellant
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