A drug dealer who suffered life-threatening injuries in a car crash while carrying a large quantity of cannabis must be paid damages by the government, appeal judges ruled yesterday.
A block of cannabis worth about £1,000 fell out of Sean Delaney’s jacket as he was pulled from the wreckage of a Mercedes near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in 2006.
The Department for Transport (DfT) refused to pay him compensation, saying that he was injured in the course of criminal activity. At the Court of Appeal yesterday, however, Lord Justice Richards said that Britain’s ban on compensating accident victims who were knowingly involved in crime violated a Brussels directive.
Delaney, 41 and a father of four, was a passenger in the Mercedes 500SL when it crashed in November 2006. He suffered life-threatening injuries, causing long-term disabilities, and has no memory of the accident. He had “gone for a spin” with Shane Pickett, who lost control of the car after trying to overtake on a bend. The car ended up in a garden, and its roof and passenger door had to be cut off to remove the men from the wreckage.
A fireman found cannabis hidden in Pickett’s sock, and when Delaney was pulled out of the car 240 grams of the drug fell from his bomber jacket.
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Pickett was given a ten-month jail term by Warwick crown court in 2007 after admitting dangerous driving and possessing cannabis. No action was taken against Delaney, who sought a multimillion-pound compensation award to pay for long-term care, but DfT lawyers fought each stage, arguing that the department was not obliged to pay.
At the heart of the case lies the “crime exception” enforced by the Motor Insurers Bureau, the body that compensates victims of uninsured drivers. The exception bans compensation to those who “knew or ought to have known” that a vehicle in which they were travelling was being used “in the course or furtherance of a crime”.
Last year in the High Court, Mr Justice Jay ruled that the caveat conflicted with the European Motor Insurance Directive and that the government was in serious breach of European Community law.
“Many readers may be wondering how it comes about that a drug dealer is entitled to compensation against Her Majesty’s Government in circumstances where he was injured during the course of a criminal joint enterprise,” the judge said. “The understandable reaction might be, ‘There must be some rule of public policy, reflecting public revulsion, which bars such a claim’. The short answer is that there is not.”
Yesterday that ruling was upheld. The government was refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court and ordered to pay £138,000 in interim legal costs to Delaney’s solicitors within 14 days. It is not known what the final settlement will be, but it is expected to run into seven figures.
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Delaney originally sued Pickett for damages, but that claim was thrown out by Coventry county court in January 2011 and was dismissed again by appeal court judges in December.