The High Court dismissed Lisa Ludlow’s personal injury claim after finding that she knowingly gave false or misleading evidence about who was driving her car when it crashed in Bettystown in May 2009.
In a judgment delivered on 12 April 2013, Mr Justice Ryan found on the balance of probabilities that Terence Treacy was driving. He rejected Ms Ludlow’s account that Darren Unsworth had been at the scene and was driving, finding that the account had been introduced to protect Mr Treacy.
The court found that Ms Ludlow was a front-seat passenger and had handed the keys to Mr Treacy while he was intoxicated and his driving capacity seriously impaired. The car crashed into a wall at Bettystown Golf Club. The judge said the collision was prima facie evidence of negligent driving and inferred that alcohol was probably its major cause.
Ms Ludlow had argued that Mr Unsworth was driving. The judge said her account was improbable, pointing to her delay in naming him and the absence of evidence from Mr Treacy, who did not attend the hearing. The court did not find that Mr Unsworth did not exist; it found that Ms Ludlow had not established that he was driving.
The judge also rejected Ms Ludlow’s account of memory loss about events after the crash, including a domestic incident at Mr Treacy’s home that led to a Garda call. The judgment noted that the ambulance crew and hospital triage nurse had not recorded a black eye, while Ms Ludlow’s mother said she had one when she arrived at her parents’ home later that night. The judge considered the domestic incident relevant but distinguished it from the evidence about the driver.
Section 26 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004 requires dismissal of a personal injury action where a plaintiff knowingly gives false or misleading evidence in a material respect, unless dismissal would cause a specified injustice. The judge concluded that Ms Ludlow had knowingly given such evidence to protect Mr Treacy and that no specific injustice exception applied. The claim was therefore dismissed.
The judgment also addressed the insurance dispute. The judge accepted the plaintiff’s legal submission that any policy exclusion denying cover to an injured passenger would be void under the relevant European directives. That conclusion did not alter the outcome: the claim was dismissed on the court’s findings about Ms Ludlow’s evidence.