Inquest – Death by Road Traffic Collision
Sam Healey, Jonathon Enston and Valentina Oldham successfully represented their client, DF, at an inquest touching the death of KH, before the Coroner’s Court, to consider the circumstances surrounding a road traffic collision in which the parties were involved.
In summary, the accident resulted from a car, driven by KH’s husband, pulling out from a side road onto a major road, immediately in front of a heavy goods vehicle (HGV) driven by our client, DF. Post-collision, it was established that the HGV tractor and trailer combination had significant brake defects. It was suggested that the braking defects contributed to the collision. The road traffic collision reconstruction expert instructed by us, on behalf of DF, calculated that the impact between the two vehicles occurred only 1.3 seconds after DF applied his brakes. Unfortunately, the collision was inevitable, and the driver of the car was left with catastrophic injuries, whilst his wife, KH, sadly died at the scene.
In preparing the case for the inquest, we had the advantage of having also represented DF during the criminal proceedings. Therefore, we were alive to the issues raised in those linked proceedings. We were also alive to potentially relevant evidence that could be made available to the coroner for consideration. This required multiple applications to the Crown Court for cross-service of evidence, as we were able to identify significant omissions from the material provided by others to the Coroner for inclusion in the initial interested person (IP) bundle.
Notwithstanding the Police Road Traffic Collision Investigator and DVSA mechanical expert adopting a new position during the coronial proceedings (in relation to the reported brake defects on the HGV), the coroner found that even with fully functional brakes, the collision was still, unfortunately, unavoidable. The collision reconstruction expert instructed on behalf of DF had calculated that, even with fully functional brakes, the collision would have occurred only 1/10th of a second later; in which time the car would likely have moved only an additional 40cm. The Police collision investigator agreed those figures in the course of cross-examination.
Almost 4 years after the incident, the Coroner concluded that it was, in fact, a road traffic accident and any brake defect as might have existed at the time of the collision did not contribute to the collision.
It is considerably regrettable for all parties that the entire proceedings (criminal and coronial) took very nearly 4 years to conclude. Our deepest condolences go out to the family of the deceased.
As in the criminal proceedings, Sam Healey instructed Richard Dawson of Counsel from Lincoln House Chambers on behalf of DF.
Related Press
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-64400861
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