Exchange Chambers

Exchange Chambers Barristers secure £8.35 million compensation award

In one of the largest awards ever made against the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB), which compensates the victims of uninsured drivers, Bill Braithwaite QC and David Knifton from Exchange Chambers have helped to secure an £8.35 million compensation award for a man who was left paralysed from the neck down after a car crash.  The settlement, which will be partly paid by a lump sum, with annual payments to cover care costs, was approved last week by the High Court in Newcastle.

In November 2005, Lukasz Borowski (27) was travelling to his work at a fruit and vegetable producers as a back seat passenger in a colleague's car, when it crashed into a deep drainage ditch in Cambridgeshire.  Mr Borowski, who was not wearing a seatbelt, suffered a fracture dislocation of his neck with damage to his spinal cord, together with brain damage, when he was thrown against the vehicle’s nearside structure.  The car’s driver was uninsured.

The MIB sought to reduce the damages by 25%, contending that the injuries would have been avoided altogether had a seatbelt been worn, but Mr Borowski’s legal team argued that, because he was exceptionally tall, the use of a seatbelt would not necessarily have prevented his injuries.  A compromise was agreed shortly before the trial, with Mr Borowski recovering 80% of his damages, valued at over £10m.

John Davis, of Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, was the solicitor acting for Mr Borowski.

Please visit BBC web site to see the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/8454803.stm