Supreme Court finds English police force not liable for death of motorist after leaving scene of earlier accident

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2024] UKSC 33
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  UK Supreme Court
• Judge:
  Lord Leggatt and Lord Burrows

Claimant and appellant Valerie Tindall argued that the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police was vicariously liable for the death of her husband Martin. The respondent made an application to strike out the claim on the basis that there was no valid claim in law, which failed at first instance but was successful before the Court of Appeal.

The appeal was heard by Lord Hodge, Lord Briggs, Lord Leggatt, Lord Burrows, and Lady Simler. Nicholas Bowen KC, Duncan Fairgrieve KC and David Lemer appeared for the appellants and Andrew Warnock KC and Ella Davis for the respondents.

Made matters worse

At approximately 4:30am on 4 March 2014, Mr Martin Kendall lost control of his car on a patch of black ice while travelling on the A413 in the direction of High Wycombe. Mr Kendall, who avoided serious injury when his car rolled into a ditch, realised that the black ice was the cause of his accident and began signalling to passing traffic to slow down to try and avoid further accidents.

Mr Kendall then called 101 to alert the police, and the incident was allocated to three PCs. On arrival, they spoke with Mr Kendall and placed a “police slow” sign on the northbound carriageway while they cleared debris from the road and requested the attendance of a gritter, without communicating the urgency of the request. At 5:26am, after Mr Kendall had left in an ambulance, the officers returned to the police station and removed the “police slow” sign. The fatal collision between Mr Tindall and another motorist occurred at some point between 5:45 and 5:52 when another driver lost control of his car on the same patch of black ice.

It was concluded by the Independent Police Complaints Commission that the officers had a case to answer for gross negligence manslaughter and misconduct in public office. While no criminal prosecution arose, an inquest concluded that they should have done more, including closing the road until the gritters arrived. Mr Kendall gave a witness statement saying he would have continued in his efforts to warn other drivers had the police not arrived, although the claimant accepted that he was not asked by the police to stop.

The Court of Appeal concluded that, at its highest, the claimant’s case was that the arrival of the police caused Mr Kendall to assume, privately, that they would act in a certain way and so influenced him to go to hospital. There was nothing in the claimant’s argument that a duty of care towards Mr Tindall arose from the police’s physical control over the accident scene.

For the appellant it was submitted that the Court of Appeal put the test too high in rejecting the claimant’s case that the police made matters worse. It was wrong to require her to identify a specific positive act that caused Mr Kendall to stop his attempts to warn other motorists. What was critical was that Mr Tindall was exposed to a greater risk of physical injury than he would have been had the police never attended the scene at all.

A victim, not a rescuer

In a joint opinion with which the other judges agreed, Lord Leggatt and Lord Burrows began: “There can be no doubt on these facts that the failure of the police officers to take steps to protect road users from the danger posed by the ice hazard to which the officers had been alerted was a serious dereliction of their public duty owed to society at large. But it does not follow that they were in breach of a duty of care in the tort of negligence owed to particular individuals.”

They continued: “There is a fundamental distinction between making matters worse, where the finding of a duty of care is commonplace and straightforward, and failing to confer a benefit (including failing to protect a person from harm), where there is generally no duty of care owed.”

Assessing the claimant’s case that the police had made matters worse, the judges said: “We accept that, on the agreed and alleged facts, the attendance of the police at the scene of Mr Kendall’s accident caused Mr Kendall to desist from attempts he would otherwise have made to alert other motorists to the ice on the road. It is not fatal to the claimant’s case on causation that nothing was specifically said or done by a police officer to encourage or direct Mr Kendall to stop his attempts to warn other motorists and leave in the ambulance.”

However, they went on to say: “The focus of the claimant’s case has been on Mr Kendall’s evidence about what he says he would have done had the police not arrived at the scene. But that is only part of the necessary inquiry. What is also critical is what the police knew or ought to have known about the role of Mr Kendall and what he would have done but for their arrival. As far as the police were concerned, Mr Kendall was someone who had been injured in an accident and no more than that. He was a victim, not a rescuer.”

The judges concluded: “On the facts agreed or alleged in this case, none of the grounds alleged for there being a duty of care owed by the police to Mr Tindall stands up to scrutiny. Applying the interference principle, the police could not be held liable for making matters worse; and none of the possible exceptions to the general rule that there is no duty of care to protect a person from harm can be made out.”

The appeal was therefore dismissed.