Natasha Palmer v Mr Seferif Mantas
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Anthony Metzer |
| Judgment Date | 20 January 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 90 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Claim No QB-2017-001637 |
[2022] EWHC 90 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Anthony Metzer Q.C
(SITTING AS A DEPUTY HIGH COURT JUDGE)
Claim No QB-2017-001637
Marcus Grant of Temple Garden Chambers (instructed by Garden House Solicitors) for the Claimant
Charles Woodhouse of Old Square Chambers (instructed by Berrymans Lace Mawer LLP Solicitors) for the Second Defendant
The First Defendant did not attend and was not represented
Hearing dates: 15 November 2021 (Reading Day); 16 November 2021, 17 November 2021, 18 November 2021, 19 November 2021, 22 November 2021, 23 November 2021, 24 November 2021, 25 November 2021, 26 November 2021, 29 November 2021 (Submissions preparation day) and 30 November 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Anthony Metzer QC
Anthony Metzer QC SITTING AS A DEPUTY HIGH COURT JUDGE:
Background
The Claimant's claim arose out of a road traffic accident on 15 June 2014 when the First Defendant drove into the rear of the Claimant's stationary car on the M25 motorway. The First Defendant was not insured at the time and therefore the Second Defendant is liable to compensate the Claimant as the insurer of the vehicle pursuant to Section 151 of The Road Traffic Act 1998.
Liability was admitted and the trial was therefore in respect of causation and quantum only. The hearing lasted twelve court days and included live evidence not just from the Claimant and various other lay witnesses, but also eight expert witnesses in addition to other agreed and read expert evidence. The Second Defendant challenges the claim on several bases, foremost of which is the allegation of fundamental dishonesty by the Claimant, but secondly in respect of clinical causation and challenges the Claimant's Updated Schedule of Loss. That Updated Schedule seeks damages of £2.2 million, whereas the Second Defendant in respect of its primary case conceded only £5,407 in damages, which was amended at the conclusion of the trial to £71,150, and alternatively in respect of its secondary case to £206,081.
The background to the accident itself is largely accepted and can be essentially gleaned from the Claimant's first and second Witness Statements dated 11 April 2017 and 19 June 2018. The Claimant, who was born on 29 November 1987, and was therefore twenty-six years old on the date of the accident, was driving along the M25 near to the Chelmsford turn-off between 8.30 and 9.00 p.m. in the middle lane in an area where there was a fifty mile per hour speed restricted section of the motorway passing through roadworks. She was driving from her parents' home in Enfield to her home in Finsbury Park having stopped en-route at a friend's house to pick up a couple of other friends to take them home with her. There were cars in front of her and she saw a car swerve as if its driver had thought that the approaching hard shoulder was a junction. The car directly in front of her came to an abrupt stop and she therefore brought her car to an abrupt stop too, with her foot on the brake and both of her hands on the steering wheel. She was then subjected to a high-energy rear end shunting by the car behind her, driven by the Defendant at high speed, which the Claimant variously estimated as being between 50 and 70 miles per hour. She recalled seeing the Defendant's headlights approach in her rear-view mirror and feared that he was not going to slow down before her car was shunted from behind. She remembers hitting her head and knee on the steering wheel when she was first thrown forward and then was thrown backwards, and felt the seatbelt cut into her stomach as she was thrown forward a second time. The impact force caused considerable damage to her car, a Renault Clio, which had been an eighteenth birthday present, as this was shunted into the back of the car ahead of her and was written off owing to the extent of damage.
An important issue which arose at trial was the extent of the Claimant's memory post-accident. She recalls being able to get out of the car unaided and the fact that the airbag did not go off. She said she was shocked and felt her whole body shaking; she remembers people working on the road came to help her. She was able to move her car over onto the hard-shoulder and recalled that, before the workers approached her, she was asked if she was okay by a young couple who were standing on the side of the hard shoulder between her car and the occupants of the car ahead, into which she had been shunted.
She then recalled the First Defendant walking over to her smelling strongly of alcohol and cigarettes. He asked, in broken English, to pay her money for the damage to the vehicle. She said he adopted an aggressive and frightening manner. The workers had suggested contacting the police and said they had seen the First Defendant throwing empty beer bottles from inside his car into the bushes on the side of the road; he was trying to persuade the Claimant not to call the police. She did not accept his offer of money for damage, the police were called, and the First Defendant was arrested. Ultimately, he was convicted of an offence of driving whilst under the influence of alcohol and was banned from driving for four years as part of his sentence. The Claimant described having islands of memory after the accident; she recalled a female police officer talking to her and asking if she had been drinking, which she denied, and that she stated that she did not need an ambulance. She remembered several police officers being present, and a man coming to tow her car away and telling her she needed to collect it the following day. She recalled the First Defendant being taken away in handcuffs, and states that her next memory was being at her friend Billy's house where she had stopped off en-route before the accident and saying to her that she could see “fireworks” whenever she shut her eyes. She recalls being in physical pain over her body and felt generally unwell. Her next memory is being at the doorstep of her parents' home in daylight and seeing her mother opening the door in her dressing gown with a look of panic and concern on her face. She has a vague recollection of vomiting, possibly at one of the hospitals she visited later, and then recalled sitting on the sofa in her parents' living room with her laptop open and feeling unwell but saying she needed to work and logging into her work emails. She believed that was several days after the accident.
The Claimant stated that her mother informed her of what took place post-accident, namely that once she got home, she was driven by her mother to Chase Farm Hospital Accident and Emergency and thereafter to Barnet General Hospital. At the first hospital, she was examined and x-rayed and there was concern because she had hit her head and was vomiting. She attended the Barnet General Hospital the following day complaining of pain in her neck, chest, back, ribs and abdomen together with headache and nausea and complained of left knee pain. Aside from the specific memories as set out, the Claimant maintained that she had a number of significant matters she has no recollection about, but now knows happened over the seventy-two hour period after the accident including the same as set out, the collision itself; what happened when she got out of the car; the Defendant's facial features; who called the police; calling the Vehicle Recovery vehicle or conversation with the recovery driver; sending her mother a text; the journey to Chase Farm Accident and Emergency and what took place at that and Barnet General Hospital; what happened when she got back to her parents' home from having been discharged from Barnet General Hospital; and sleeping thereafter. The Claimant took between seven and ten days off from work and believes that her recollection of the laptop on her sofa was the following Wednesday or Thursday after the accident.
The Claimant's early life and pre-accident working life
The Claimant was born and brought up in Enfield. Her father was a treasurer of a bank for much of her childhood and then changed career to work as a sales specialist for Thomson Reuters. Her mother was a home worker. She has an elder brother who is a chef in London. She was educated privately at Palmer's Green High School and passed ten GCSEs with A to C grades. She then went to Southgate School to study three A Levels which she passed with B, C and D grades respectively. The Claimant then went to Salford University in Manchester to study media studies and whilst doing so worked on a part-time basis for the Pure Group. After one term, she realised that the degree course did not interest her and was unlikely to lead to a lucrative graduate career, so she decided to leave and progress with her working life. At that time, she was offered a hospitality job in Dubai by the Jeremiah Hotel Group, which she accepted and lived and worked there for six months before travelling for several months in Australia.
Upon her return to London, after being unemployed for a short while, she accepted a job offer which involved doing promotional work for a nightclub in Ibiza. She enjoyed her time there, but it was cut short by a tragic death of a close friend who was robbed and assaulted one night and left for dead in a ditch on the island. She and other friends were unable to find him and alerted the police. Following a huge search, he was found three days later, unconscious and dehydrated. He never recovered from a deep coma, dying some days later. The Claimant was traumatised by that event, returned to...
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