12/11/2024
Why is the case important?
The Supreme Court examined the circumstances in which the police and other public bodies, owe a duty of care in negligence arising from the exercise of statutory powers and duties.
The facts
K’s car left a country road and overturned due to treacherous black ice. He waved a warning to approaching motorists, and then advised the police of the icy road surface.
The police erected a single “Police Slow” warning sign, and cleared the road of accident debris, before K departed to hospital. The police then removed the sign and left, with nothing left in place to warn traffic of the ongoing danger from black ice.
Roughly 20 minutes later, Mr Tindall was driving along the same stretch of road when, tragically, an oncoming driver lost control on the black ice, leading to a head-on collision in which both drivers were killed.
The Procedural Background
The Chief Constable’s attempt to strike out a claim for damages brought by the Claimant, Mr Tindall’s widow, on the basis that it disclosed no reasonable cause of action failed at first instance but succeeded in the Court of Appeal.
On appeal to the Supreme Court, the Claimant argued that the police made the situation worse, since their presence caused K to cease his attempts to warn motorists at the scene.
The Judgment
The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the Claimant’s appeal and refused to reinstate the claim.
At common law, public authorities generally owe the same duties in tort as private individuals or bodies. Lord Leggatt and Lord Burrows confirmed: “…liability can generally arise only if a person acts in a way which makes another worse off as a result”.
If carrying out the activity makes another person worse off than if the activity had not been undertaken, then liability can arise.
The Claimant did not plead that the police knew that K was making motorists aware of the ice. Nor was it pleaded that K had made the police aware at the scene that he had been alerting other motorists. Accordingly, the ground of appeal failed.
The police did not create the danger presented by the ice, or make it worse, nor did they act negligently so as to influence K’s decision to leave the scene and stop warning other motorists of the danger.
There are recognised exceptions to the general rule that there is no duty to protect a person from harm, but they did not apply to Mr Tindall’s case.
There was no communication between the police officers who attended the accident scene and Mr Tindall. Accordingly, there was no assumption of responsibility by the police to protect him from harm.
The Supreme Court did not address whether a duty of care to prevent harm could exist, where the defendant has control over a hazard on land which all of the public have a right to access. That was not relevant, since the police did not have control over the black ice.
Neither did the police’s position as professional emergency responders create a “status exception”.
The police had not made the situation worse, so owed no duty of care to Mr Tindall. The Supreme Court saw no reason to allow the claim to proceed to trial. It remains struck out.
Comment
Successive Supreme Court decisions including N v Poole, HXA v Surrey County Council and now Tindall, confirm that the law of negligence in relation to public authorities is not a developing area. These cases highlight the difficulties claimants face establishing a duty of care on the part of statutory authorities to prevent harm which the authority did not create.
