Van Wees v Karkour & Anor, Court of Appeal - Queen's Bench Division, February 14, 2007, [2007] EWHC 165 (QB)
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Van Wees v Karkour & Anor, Court of Appeal - Queen's Bench Division, February 14, 2007, [2007] EWHC 165 (QB)
Neutral Citation Number: [2007] EWHC 165 (QB)
Case No: HQ04X00523IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISIONRoyal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LLDate: 14/02/2007Before :THE HON. MR JUSTICE LANGSTAFF- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Between :- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Mr Marcus Grant (instructed by Dickinsons Solicitors') for the Claimant Mr William Featherby (instructed by Berryman Lace Mawers & DWF Solicitors') for theDefendants'Hearing dates: : 14th to 17th Nov inc & 21st to 24th Nov inc and 1st Dec 2006- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -JudgmentMr Justice Langstaff :This claim raises unusual difficulties.It is one for damages arising out of the road traffic accident on the 22nd May 2000, when the claimant was almost 34 years old. She suffered a head injury. Her case is that the after effects of the injury have caused her to lose the chance of a career. The loss is said to be so significant, of a career potentially so glittering, that it is to be measured in millions of pounds: the schedule of claimed loss is just £23,681 short of 10 million pounds.The defendants accept liability for some loss, having settled differences between them, but say that the claim is grossly exaggerated.The difficulties arise because the claimant is a woman of high intelligence, with a full scale I.Q. measured now, post accident, by the neuropsychologist Professor Robin Morris at 128, placing her in the top 3 percent of her age group. On one occasion, whilst unable to work because of the after effects of injury, she told her G.P. she was reading Bertrand Russell. She is Dutch. This may well have been in English, one of her second languages. The damage she claims to have suffered is so subtle that it does not make her unemployable. Indeed, since the accident she obtained a high level corporate job with a starting salary in 2001 of ninety thousand pounds, which with annual bonus and benefits made up a total package well into six figures. Yet it is contended that if uninjured she would have had a yet higher IQ, and without the subtle diminutions in her abilities to perform at a high corporate level would command a yet greater salary.I have thus had to bear in mind throughout that she is a person who is well able to manipulate evidence and events, and have to be astute as to whether she has done so, as the defendants claim.Overview.The claimant was a pillion passenger on a scooter involved in a collision near to Ludgate Circus. She lost consciousness for a short time. It is undoubted that she suffered a head injury, with no significant orthopaedic injury. Eyewitnesses reported her fitting, and turning blue (indicating a lack of oxygen) at the time. She was taken to hospital, groggy and vomiting. There she was detained overnight. It is common ground that she suffered some post traumatic amnesia, the exact extent of which remains in issue.The accident occurred on the day she was due to begin work as one of two prime movers in a new start company. It is undoubted that she did no significant work for at least three, and possibly four months for that company. Since she would naturally have wished to work, and to achieve success with her entrepreneurial venture, and could not do so, this alone indicates the dislocation to her life which the accident caused her.The company did not properly get off the ground. By the time she returned to work for it, as best she could, the writing was already on the wall. She left the company, Executip, in December 2000. Effectively, it folded.She was then out of work until she secured employment with Vodafone in their (new) in-house corporate finance department, on 4th June 2001. She worked for them in Newbury, reporting to a David Anderson. He seconded her to Japan in February 2002, where she worked until mid to late July 2002.Although Mr Anderson recorded the view in May 2002 that she was achieving success in Japan, he then left the company. Her manager changed. Shortly thereafter, she was withdrawn from Japan, her career there having been disappointing as others viewed it. She returned to Newbury, where she must (I assess) have felt under something of a cloud.At the end of January 2003 the first of three significant blows struck the claimant. The first (according to her a real blow) was her being told on 22nd January 2003 by a Dr. Baker, to whom she had been referred by Professor Morris for treatment, that her cognitive condition would not improve. Second, on 27th January 2003 Mr Anderson's successor, Mr Butterworth, who thought she had no long term future working in corporate finance, told her so. Her days at Vodafone were plainly numbered, with only a vain hope of a sideways move to another department. The third blow was to be involved in a car crash in the early hours of 1st February 2003.The claimant had not thus far been absent from work for Vodafone in consequence of the accide...See the full content of this document
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