Paralysed woman’s £6m damages claim against pool owner dismissed

Kylie Grimes, who sued friend’s father after sustaining injuries from diving into swimming pool, loses compensation bid A woman who launched a £6m damages claim after being left paralysed when she hit her head on the bottom of a swimming pool during an impromptu late-night party has lost her high court action. Kylie Grimes was hurt in August 2006 when she dived into the indoor pool at the Surrey home of David Hawkins, managing director of a forklift truck business. Grimes, now 23, of Farnham, claimed that her injuries were caused by Hawkins’s negligence or breach of his duties under the Occupiers’ Liability Act. She was left paralysed from the chest down after the force of the impact broke a vertebra below the base of her neck. At a hearing in May, Mrs Justice Thirlwall, sitting in London, heard that Hawkins and his wife were away that night but had given permission for daughter Katie, who had just left college, to have two friends over as she was not happy on her own. Katie Hawkins told the court that she phoned her father for permission to bring three more but, in the end, a group of about 20 came back to the house from the pub. Mr Hawkins, of Farnham, denied liability. His counsel, William Norris QC, told the judge that no sound legal basis existed upon which he could be held liable for the accident which happened in an “unremarkable swimming pool on domestic premises when the claimant, an adult, chose to do something which involved an obvious risk”. Thirlwall, who was only ruling on the issue of liability, dismissed the claim against Hawkins on Wednesday. She said: “The pool was not unsafe for diving. I have no doubt that some mature adults faced with a group of young adults in high spirits, some of whom had had too much to drink, would send them all home rather than allow any of them into a swimming pool. “But that is not to say that the duty owed to the claimant [Grimes] under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 required the defendant to put the pool out of bounds that night.” Thirlwall added: “The defendant was not required to adopt a paternalistic approach to his visitors, all of whom were adults, all of whom were making choices about their behaviour that night.” The judge concluded: “I do not accept that it is incumbent on a householder with a private swimming pool to prohibit adults from diving into an ordinary pool whose dimensions and contours can clearly be seen. “It may well be different where there is some hidden or unexpected hazard, but there was none here.” She ruled that Hawkins was not in breach of his duty to Grimes under the Occupiers’ Liability Act and she also dismissed the claim of negligence against him. Disability guardian.co.uk

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