A student from Plymouth who suffered brain injuries after falling 20ft following a night out is making an accident claim against Plymouth City Council.
Jonathan Harvey was described as a talented sportsman before the accident. He tripped and fell over a damaged fence into a Tesco car park.
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His injuries were so bad he almost died, and he had to stay in hopsital for eight months following the incident in April 2003.
At London’s High Court his injury lawyers argued that the city council is liable under the Occupiers Liability Act for their client’s injuries because it owned the land from which Mr Harvey fell.
They also said the council should have made sure that the area was safe for a “visitor”.
The High Court was told that the drop over which Mr Harvey fell could be accessed through a gap in the vegetation, and a fence that was installed to prevent accidents was broken.
However, the council said Mr Harvey was solely to blame for the accident. He had been out with friends before the fall and had drunk up to eight pints of beer, and he was apparently running away from a taxi driver when the incident happened.
Representing the local authority, Barrister Catherine Brown made allegations that Mr Harvey had entered the land for a “potentially illegal” and “certainly an improper and illegitimate” purpose.
The court heard that Mr Harvey, who at the time was a student at Southampton University studying physiotherapy, had been on a night out with three friends after they watched a friend play rugby for Plymouth Albion’s youth team.
During the taxi ride home they decided to go to the Tesco store to get food, and the taxi driver dropped them off nearby at about 2am.
Mr Harvey and one of his friends then ran off before the taxi fare had been paid, forcing another member of their group to pay what Mr Harvey owed.
They ran into bushes on the property, afterwhich Mr Harvey fell from a height into the car park.
His life was saved by doctors at Derriford Hospital, but he still suffers complications due to his injuries. He has trouble walking and talking because of bleeding on the brain.
Mr Harvey’s barrister, Stephen Killalea QC, placed the blame squarely on the council saying that if the area had been inspected prior to the accident the potentially fatal hazard would have been spotted and fixed.
He made the case that Mr Harvey tripped over the fence, which stood about knee height, and that was the overriding cause of the accident.
However, Miss Brown said that Mr Harvey was entirely to blame for his injuries, claiming that it was “inherently unlikely” he tripped over the fence and insisting that his presence on the land was as a “trespasser”.