Helen Wolstenholme reports on genuine accidents & deliberate contempt
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April was a good month for defendant personal injury practitioners:
● The Court of Appeal gave judgment in favour of the defendant to a personal injury claim in two cases where the key issue was the standard of care owed by one individual to another; and
● in an unusual case and the first of its kind, an individual was found to be in contempt of court as a result of false statements which she had made during the course of personal injury proceedings which had been compromised after the disclosure of surveillance evidence.
In Orchard v Lee [2009] EWCA Civ 295, Mrs Orchard appealed against a decision of HHJ Iain Hughes QC, sitting at Poole County Court, dismissing her claim for personal injury against a 13-year-old schoolboy. Mrs Orchard was a lunchtime supervisor at the school, and was injured when the boy was playing tag with another boy and ran backwards into her. The accident happened in an outdoor social space, in relation to which there
