The High Court has dismissed Caitrin Cooke’s action against Catriona Hackett over a 2013 collision on the M7 during a severe hailstorm, finding the defendant was not negligent.
In a judgment delivered on 9 May 2017, Mr Justice Barr said the central issue was whether the crash involved two separate incidents or one continuous event. The court accepted that Cooke’s car crossed from the right lane over the inside lane, struck a grass embankment and collided with Hackett’s car on the hard shoulder and gravel area.
Cooke said her car had stopped after hitting the embankment. She and her husband said he got out to inspect it, then returned to the car and saw Hackett’s vehicle approaching. They maintained that Hackett struck their stationary car.
Hackett had no specific memory of the collision. Her passenger, Catherine O’Dwyer, said Cooke’s car continued rotating after hitting the embankment and moved towards Hackett’s car. O’Dwyer said Hackett turned left in an effort to avoid it, but the vehicles collided.
The judge found O’Dwyer’s account reliable. He also rejected Mr Cooke’s evidence that he was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the collision. The judgment cited contrary accounts in an initial letter to the defendant’s insurer, medical records and Mr Cooke’s personal injury summons. The judge found those documents reflected what Mr Cooke had said at the time and concluded that he had been wearing his seatbelt.
The court also found that Cooke’s handwritten report to her insurer did not match her testimony about her husband’s movements before the collision. It said photographs and evidence about damage to the vehicles were consistent with O’Dwyer’s account. The judge found no evidence that Hackett’s car struck the embankment before colliding with Cooke’s vehicle.
The judge accepted evidence that Hackett had been travelling at a slow and reasonable speed for the hailstorm and had turned onto the hard shoulder in response to the emergency created by Cooke’s skidding car. He concluded that Hackett had acted reasonably and that there was no basis to find her liable. The order dismissed Cooke’s action against Hackett; the judgment did not award damages to Cooke.