Driving Negligence in UK Law

"The second question you have to decide: 'Was the driving that caused those injuries reckless?' If so, then it is manslaughter. If you are not satisfied that it was reckless, then the verdict is not guilty. To amount to reckless driving mere negligence is not enough. His conduct must go beyond the question of compensation between citizens and amount to, in your view, criminal conduct requiring punishment.

If a driver so negligently manages his vehicle as to cause it to obstruct the highway and constitute a danger to other road users, including those who are driving too fast or not keeping a proper lookout, but not those who deliberately or recklessly drive into the obstruction, then the first driver's negligence may be held to have contributed to the causation of an accident of which the immediate cause was the negligent driving of the vehicle which because of the presence of the obstruction collides with it or with some other vehicle or some other person.

Nothing will suffice short of an agreement to waive any claim for negligence. The plaintiff must agree, expressly or impliedly, to waive any claim for any injury that may befall him due to the lack of reasonable care by the defendant: or, more accurately, due to the failure of the defendant to measure up to the standard of care that the law requires of him.

I do not think that the fact that the criminal conduct was one of the two causes is a sufficient basis for the ex turpi causa defence to succeed. Our attention has not been drawn to any remotely comparable case where it has in fact succeeded: for reasons I have explained, cases involving a claim by one party to a criminal joint enterprise against another party to that joint enterprise are materially different.

Lord Sumption has spelled out in Les Laboratoires Servier that the ex turpi causa defence is rooted in the public interest. The public interest is served by the approach I have indicated. It takes into account both the negligent driving for which Mr Bell is responsible and the dangerous driving for which Daniel is responsible It enables damages to be recovered for the negligence of Mr Bell but not for Daniel's own criminal conduct.

A cause of action is simply a factual situation the existence of which entitles one person to obtain from the Court a remedy against another person. But it is essential to realise that when, since 1873, the name of a form of action is used to identify a cause of action, it is used as a convenient and succinct description of a particular category of factual situation which entitles one person to obtain from the Court a remedy against another person.