Green v Sunset & Vine Productions Ltd & Anor

In negligence, foreseeability of the precise sequence causing injury is unnecessary where the defendant’s negligent act caused the loss and the injury was of a foreseeable kind. That principle does not remove the requirement to prove causation. It has no application where the alleged negligence made no material difference to the accident. An appellate court will not reopen a trial judge’s evaluation of factual and expert evidence merely because another interpretation is possible. Findings that a driver’s speed and chosen line caused an accident, while an object encountered during the manoeuvre made no material difference, therefore justified dismissal of the claim.

The appellant suffered serious injuries while driving a historic racing car at Goodwood. He alleged that a television camera placed beside the racing line had destabilised the car and that Sunset and Vine Productions Ltd and the British Automobile Racing Club Ltd were negligent in its placement and installation.

Ouseley J dismissed the claim against all defendants: [2009] EWHC 1610 (QB). The appeal challenged the findings on negligence, the rejection of the appellant’s accident-reconstruction theory, and the conclusion that any negligence concerning the camera was not legally causative. The central issue was whether liability could arise where the camera played, at most, a modest part in the accident and the precise sequence was unforeseeable.

Etherton LJ, with Jacob and Ward LJJ agreeing, dismissed the appeal.

1. The trial judge was entitled to conclude that placing the camera beside the racing line did not create a reasonably foreseeable risk of significant destabilisation. The evidence included the camera’s design, the absence of previous stability problems, and expert evidence supporting the placement. The Court of Appeal would not undertake a minute re-examination of competing factual and expert evidence where the judge had acted within his proper fact-finding function.
2. The judge’s treatment of other suggested risks, including the camera being thrown onto the track, striking a driver, or the cable becoming entangled, did not assist the appeal. There was no specific finding that the actual installation was wholly unsecured with sufficient loose cable to create those risks. In any event, the judge found that the installation was not shown to have been negligent.
3. The principles in Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963] AC 837 and Jolley v Sutton LBC [2000] 1 WLR 1082 apply where a negligent act has caused loss, but the loss has occurred through an unforeseeable sequence. They do not dispense with proof that the allegedly negligent act caused the loss. Since the camera’s presence and installation made no material difference to the accident, those principles had no application.
4. The judge’s references to the camera as a modest contributory factor had to be read with his express findings that the accident would have occurred in the same way whether the camera had been fixed or the cable had been secured differently. A mere description of something as a cause did not establish legally sufficient causation. Heskell v Continental Express Ltd [1950] 1 All ER 1033 did not assist on the facts.
5. For completeness, Etherton LJ observed that the judge had also been wrong to find negligence merely because Sunset lacked MSA or BARC approval. The alleged failure to obtain that approval had not formed part of the appellant’s case. This observation was unnecessary to the dismissal of the appeal.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): dismissed the appeal from the order of Ouseley J.
2. Queen’s Bench Division: Ouseley J dismissed the appellant’s claim against the defendants: [2009] EWHC 1610 (QB).