Christopher Godwin and Melanie Booth of Kane Shannon Weiler LLP acted on behalf of our client on an appeal and were successful in overturning a ruling that our client was 90% responsible for a motor vehicle accident.
In this case the other party was turning left at an uncontrolled intersection when struck by our client who was driving straight through. The other driver did not see our client’s oncoming vehicle before commencing her turn; our client did not observe that cars to her left had stopped to allow the respondent to turn.
The trial judge apportioned liability 90% to our client and 10% to the other party. Christopher Godwin and Melanie Booth appealed the apportionment of liability on the basis that the trial judge erred in not recognizing and applying the appropriate legal priority between a left-turning driver and a driver passing another vehicle on the right and that the allocation of fault was grossly disproportionate to an appropriate allocation.
The Appeal was allowed. Liability was reapportioned at 60% to the other driver and 40% to our client.
The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge’s apportionment of fault was grossly disproportionate to an appropriate allocation. The other party entered the intersection when unsafe to do so. She failed to yield the right of way. While our client was also at fault for failing to recognize that other vehicles had stopped, the other party’s conduct was clearly more blameworthy.
In the result, this meant that our client was found to be substantially less responsible for the accident than had been found by the trial judge. Congratulations to Chris Godwin and Melanie Booth for the excellent result.