Personal injury compensation claim news
09/05/2007

Paralysed man wins damages on appeal

A 23-year-old former van driver who broke his back in a work accident has won his right to a personal injury compensation claim payout at the Court of Appeal.

In 2004 he was flung from his van and left paralysed in a road accident on the M1 after falling asleep at the wheel. At the time he was working for a Bradford based company.

His personal injury compensation claim is expected to be in the region of £1 million, though the final amount will be reduced as in not wearing a seat belt at the time of the road accident he was deemed to have negligently contributed to his own spinal cord injury.

On the day of the work accident, the man had worked 19 hours and driven hundreds of miles. The Appeal judge ruled that he was, "In that predicament because his employers had put him there."

The Court of Appeal ruling overturned an earlier High Court decision, which had placed liability entirely on the 23-year-old man.

On the night of the crash, the man's 28-year-old managing director had been sitting next to him in the van, also asleep.

The judge said that the managing director's proverbs, "Eating's cheating", and "You can sleep when you're dead", appropriately summarised the company's philosophy.

Newspaper, The Sun[insert italics], quoted a personal injury solicitor from Leeds as saying, "What this case shows is that employers who cause or permit their employees to work very long hours and drive at times when they are likely to be very tired could be liable if that tiredness leads to an accident.

"It has been accepted for decades that it is not safe to allow, for example, a factory employee to use machinery for hours at a time because of the risk of injury.

"Driving is also a potentially dangerous activity and employers need to take reasonable steps to ensure that their employees are safe."

The man has been granted an interim payment of £400,000. The exact size of the final personal injury compensation claim payout will be established at a later hearing.