Sobolewska v Threlfall (Rev 1)
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
- MR JUSTICE FOSKETT
Areas of Law
- Tort Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The court ruled on a case involving a claimant who sustained a fractured ankle and head injury after being struck by a slowly moving car driven by the defendant. With both parties having limited memory of the incident, the court used circumstantial and expert evidence to conclude that the defendant's vehicle caused the claimant's injuries. There was no contributory negligence on the claimant's part, and judgment was rendered in her favor.
Judgment
Mr Justice Foskett:
On 10 February 2012 the Claimant, then aged 39, sustained a fracture of her left ankle and a significant head injury that caused brain damage leading to aphasia (namely, a difficulty to communicate), certain cognitive deficits and a weakness in her right arm.
Her case is that these injuries were caused when a car driven by the Defendant in the car park of Whiteheads (a convenience store and off licence) in Great Harwood, Blackburn, came into contact with her, sending her to the ground. It is not in issue that the vehicle was travelling very slowly at the material time. It was a cold and frosty night.
Apart from the Defendant, whose own appreciation of precisely what occurred was limited for reasons that will become apparent, there were no witnesses to what occurred. The brain injury sustained by the Claimant means that she has no recollection of what occurred. That has made the precise reconstruction of events difficult. Unfortunately, quite wrongly, those who came to the scene immediately after it was appreciated that the Claimant was injured thought that she may have been under the influence of alcohol. That was not so, but it made a difference to the way in which her injuries were investigated initially. Equally, because the Defendant was uncertain about what occurred, including whether his car struck the Claimant at all, the Police were obliged to consider alternative possibilities as to the cause of her head injury, including whether she had been the victim of an assault (not, I emphasise, by the Defendant but) by some unidentified party.
The whole investigation of the circumstances in which she came to suffer her injuries became side-tracked initially by virtue of the Police investigation. That investigation did not take long and in due course the view was formed that there was no evidence of an assault such that a criminal prosecution could be launched against anyone. However, given the Defendant’s own perception (that his car had not impacted on the Claimant), those representing his interests (or the interests of his insurers) have pursued his case on the basis that the Claimant’s head injury and indeed her ankle injury may have been caused, or probably were caused, at some point before her arrival in the car park and thus had nothing to do with any accident in the car park. That position had changed in respect of the ankle injury by the end of the trial as I will mention below (see paragraph 5).
By the end of the