No Seat Belt Crash Driver Get $1M

Case reported on page 1 West Australian 4 June 2003

This was a case involving a seriously injured woman driver in a motor vehicle accident whilst travelling on the Kwinana Freeway resulting in her becoming a paraplegic.

Prior to the collision our client was attempting to change from the left lane to the right lane and to overtake the defendant's vehicle which was in the right hand lane. The right hand rear corner of our client's vehicle clipped the left hand front corner of the defendant's vehicle causing our client to lose control and roll her vehicle a number of times before coming to a stop.

This was a hard fought case in which the insurer made no offer of settlement and argued before the Court that our client should receive no award of damages due to the accident being entirely her own fault.

The District Court trial Judge determined that the other driver was negligent in failing to keep a proper look out and to allow our client sufficient room to overtake him and to change lanes.

The trial Judge applied a 55% discount to the award of damages to take into account the fact that our client was not wearing a seat belt and also to take into account her own contributory negligence. She was awarded $949,390.98 after the discount was applied.

The insurer subsequently appealed the decision of the trial Judge and on appeal to the Supreme Court 2 of the 3 appeal court judges held in our client's favour, dismissing the insurers appeal. The appeal court also increased the original award by a further $21,355.00.