F v AH Ltd (Road traffic accident case)

An elderly gentleman suffered very serious leg injuries following a collision between his motorcycle and an oncoming HGV vehicle on a bend in a narrow country road.

Liability was disputed. The claimant contended that the HGV driver had encroached onto his side of the road. The HGV driver claimed that whilst the offside of his lorry might have been slightly to the offside of the central broken white line, the nearside of his lorry was as close to the verge as it could be with the result that he could not have avoided the collision. The defendant also contended that had the claimant been travelling slower he could have manoeuvred to his nearside to avoid the collision.

The claimant obtained accident reconstruction evidence but had not issued proceedings when the matter was referred for Independent Evaluation (IE).  The claimant wished to resolve the litigation quickly so as to be able to get on with his life without lawyers. The defendant, although firmly disputing liability was alive to the likely delays of the traditional route, as well as the ‘litigation risk’.

Upon referral to IE, the Evaluator gave directions as to the evidence required to fairly assess quantum of the case and the parties exchanged position statements on liability and quantum. The defendants gave an undertaking not to raise a Limitation Defence to enable the Evaluation to take place before the claimant issued proceedings and the £10,000 issue fee was incurred.

In their representations to the Evaluator, both parties firmly maintained their stance re: liability. The Evaluator identified some errors in the accident reconstruction evidence, which resulted in the claimant’s position being less strong than initially believed to be so.  After hearing the parties on the facts, law and merits, the Evaluator expressed the non-binding view that the claimant would have difficulty in establishing liability, but that there remained a litigation risk to the defendant because of some factual evidential inconsistencies.  The Evaluator’s management of the parties’ expectations regarding liability was key.

The Evaluator went onto hear from the parties on quantum and provided a valuation of the claim were liability to be established. The evaluated figure was higher than the defendant had contended for.

The Evaluator proceeded to facilitate a settlement between the parties which resulted in the claimant receiving an award of damages, which although significantly less than the full valuation of the claim, was secured at least 2 years earlier than would have been the case had he proceeded to trial, in a situation where at trial there was a strong possibility his claim might have failed.

The defendant was able to achieve an early resolution with an outlay of a fraction of the costs that they would have incurred had the matter proceeded to trial even if they had succeeded, given that QOCS applied.

At the end of the evaluation and facilitation process, both parties openly acknowledged that they had achieved a far better result than they would have done had they proceeded to trial.