The appellant, William Roe, had crashed his car into a cable support pole on a tramway in Sheffield and sustained serious injuries. His car had slid in wet weather along the tram rails, which protruded a little from the road surface, and had then "snatched" on the adjacent concrete. He issued proceedings against the defendants on the basis that they should have known that the protruding rails were dangerous particularly in the wet. The court decided as preliminary issues that the state of the highway materially contributed to the accident and the appellant's driving did not, and (on appeal) that both the tram operator and the highway authority could be concurrently liable under the relevant statutes. At trial, however, the judge dismissed the claim against the first defendant and struck out the claims against the third and fourth defendants. The appellant appealed against these decisions.
The appellant argued that:

  • The first defendant owed a duty of care at common law in addition to its statutory obligations as highway authority, and

  • The fourth defendant owed a duty to advise the relevant parties of dangers of which it was aware and of the solution to those dangers.

    • Reference

    The Court of Appeal found that the first defendant did owe the appellant a duty of care. This arose out of its part in the design and implementation of the tram project. The court also agreed that the fourth defendant had a duty to advise of dangers and their solutions in circumstances where they had undertaken to provide a safe system and had obtained information that indicated those dangers and solutions to them.

    *Full case details
    William Roe vs Sheffield City Council (1) South Yorkshire Light Railway Ltd (2) South Yorkshire Supertram Ltd (3) Balfour Beatty Power Construction (4), 23 March 2004, Court of Appeal (Civil Division), Judgment of Lord Justice Kennedy

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    Postscript

    This case is a lead action in relation to personal injury claims involving Supertram, the collective name for the second and third defendants. The judge had tried to manage the case by reducing the number of defendants so as to leave only the one against which the appellant had the strongest case. The Court of Appeal was not happy with this approach, and allowed the appellant to keep his options open, largely because the second defendant was trying to pass the buck to the fourth defendant. Lord Justice Kennedy instead criticised the defendants for not sorting out between them during the course of the action which of them was liable to the claimant, and sent out a warning that any attempt to issue contribution notices and pursue Part 20 proceedings after the conclusion of the main action might meet with a refusal by the court to grant permission. The message to companies and local authorities caught up in this kind of multi-party litigation where the claimant has a strong case against someone is therefore to pay off the claimant between them and continue contribution proceedings among themselves, rather than all to hide behind the most vulnerable defendant and see if he can defeat the claim before working on contribution.