Quinn victory over payout to brain-damaged car passenger

Quinn Insurance has avoided a large payout to a brain-damaged passenger after an appeal judge ruled in the insurer’s favour.

Plasterer Nicholas Smith, 47, suffered brain damage “with severe lasting consequences” after a BMW, in which he was a passenger, skidded on black ice near the village of Cornwood in March 2007 before slamming into the wall of Moor Cross House. 

Smith claimed compensation from Quinn who covered his friend and then colleague, Jonathan Fordyce, who was at the wheel of the car when it span off the road.

Fordyce, of Paignton, initially told investigators he had no chance of avoiding disaster after his car hit a patch of black ice.

But he later amended his account to say that he was at fault after learning “how many things Mr Smith still had wrong with him”, London’s Appeal Court heard.

He hoped as a result that his insurer Quinn would pay out for his friend.

Fordyce “acted out of sympathy” in the “misplaced belief” that he could help Smith gain compensation, the court heard.

Smith’s case reached the Appeal Court because his lawyers challenged an original ruling which declared Fordyce was not at fault and the accident was caused by an unforeseeable loss of control because of black ice on the road.

But Lord Justice Toulson backed the earlier decision and concluded: “It is a tragedy for Mr Smith that he should have suffered a severe head and brain injury in the accident, but I do not consider that the judge’s careful analysis and conclusions can properly be faulted.”