The Supreme Court has rejected a claim that Thames Valley Police was liable for a fatal crash under the ‘interference’ principle. Valerie Tindall, the widow of Malcolm Tindall, who died in a road traffic accident on 4 March 2014, brought the claim against the police on the basis that officers ‘interfered’ and made matters worse after a prior collision on the same stretch of road.

It was agreed that a different motorist, Martin Kendall, had lost control of his car, which rolled into a roadside ditch, just over an hour before the fatal crash on on a Buckinghamshire A-road.

Kendall, who had previously worked as a road-gritter for 10 years, realised black ice on the stretch of road had caused the accident and he ‘waved vigorously’ to other passing traffic to try and warn them of the danger until police officers arrived.

Duncan Fairgrieve KC, for the claimant, alleged Thames Valley officers knew drivers on the road needed help to avoid some harm and also knew they had ‘done something to put off or prevent [Kendall] helping’ and therefore owed the drivers a duty to take reasonable steps to help.

Lord Leggatt and Lord Burrows, delivering a unanimous ruling, said they agreed the attendance of the police at the scene of Kendall’s accident caused him ‘to desist from attempts he would otherwise have made to alert other motorists to the ice on the road’. 

‘Where the claimant’s case breaks down, however, is in relation to what the police knew or ought to have known about Mr Kendall’s warning efforts’, they said. The crucial question is whether the police could reasonably have foreseen that their attendance would displace attempts that Mr Kendall would otherwise have made to prevent road users from suffering harm. The critical importance of the fact that any such intention on his part was purely private, and was not disclosed to the police, relates to this latter question. 

‘Even if the police officers had encouraged or coerced Mr Kendall to leave the scene to go to the hospital, that could not have given rise to any duty to protect road users from harm when the police officers neither knew nor ought to have known that Mr Kendall would otherwise have taken steps to do so.’

The appeal was dismissed.

 

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