Birmingham court to test insurance loop hole for road

A case before Birmingham county court tomorrow (19 February) will decide on whether insurers can use a loop hole to avoid accepting responsibility for road accidents.

The trial concerns an accident which took place in Moseley on the afternoon of 16 November 2007. A car driven by Tracey Cranmer of Warstock in Birmingham crossed the road and collided with two other vehicles, damaging them.

One of them was a van driven by Nigel Paul Brown of Solihull, a plumbing and gas engineer, aged 36 and from Solihull. His van suffered a deep scrape along it s length, which cost £4,000 in repairs.

Miss Cranmer claimed she had no recollection of the accident, and that she had blacked out at the wheel.
That much is not in dispute. But Miss Cranmer initially claimed that the cause of her black out was either slimming pills or the fact that she had been starving herself, in order to lose weight.

Later she changed her defence to one of ‘automatism’, which is to suggest that the cause of the black out is unknown and could not have been predicted from her medical record.

Automatism would mean that, because she was not in any way negligent, she cannot be held responsible for the accident.

But because it provides a ‘catch-all’ defence to almost any road accident, insurers generally have an agreement between themselves not to use automatism as a defence.

The position is explained by Mr Brown’s lawyer, Alex Brown (no relation) of Cardiff-based motor accident specialists NewLaw.

‘The use of automatism as a defence is generally considered against the public interest, since it provides too convenient a loop hole,’ he says.

‘Although where automatism is found to be a legitimate defence it would mean the defendant was not responsible, it would leave the claimant who has suffered damage and quite possibly serious injury with absolutely no right of recompense.

‘In this case, my client Mr Brown had a front seat passenger, who sustained some injury and has been paid damages by Miss Cranmer’s insurers, Direct Line.

‘This is in apparent contradiction of their claim of automatism, since if it applies to Mr Brown it clearly applies to his passenger too.

‘The suspicion must be that Direct Line are fighting Mr Brown’s case because it involves a bigger payment in damages. However, in terms of public interest, the insurers’ position puts in jeopardy the rights of road users everywhere.’

The case will open at 10.30am on 19 February at the Priory Courts in Bull Street, Birmingham, and is expected to be completed that day.