The Liverpool community is no stranger to tragedy.
After joy, community spirit and happiness came chaos and tragedy yesterday after a 53 year old white male ploughed into an unsuspecting crowd of people on Water Street in Liverpool who were in town celebrating their football team’s success in the Premiership on 26th May 2025. We’ve been here before. The how’s and why’s will come later. It goes without saying, the spirit of community within Liverpool will always overcome tragedy with grace.
Whilst the events leading up to the collisions on Water Street in Liverpool on 26th May 2025 are not yet clear, we look at the incident from a legal standpoint in terms of the right to claim compensation for injury and loss. It is vital that victims of this tragedy receive appropriate compensation for their loss within a reasonable time period.
What is known at this stage is that a driver has collided with a community of people.
Assuming the driver has not suffered a medical incident, a claim for compensation can be brought by both ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ victims of the collision.
Primary victims
Primary victims are those who have been directly involved in an incident. There is usually no dispute where someone is a primary victim. In a civil action the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim who is known as the Claimant. It is necessary to prove on the balance of probability that a victim has suffered injury and loss caused by the negligence of another.
A claim can be brought for physical and/or psychiatric injury. A psychiatric injury alone can be brought if a physical injury was reasonably foreseeable (likely to happen) even if the only injury was psychiatric.
Secondary victims
A secondary victim is someone who has witnessed the upsetting events but were not directly involved. Guidance was given by the courts following the Hillsborough disaster known as the ‘Alcock Criteria’ as laid out in the case Alcock v CC of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC310.
To fall into the class of a secondary victim and claim compensation for psychiatric injury, the Claimant must satisfy the following criteria:
- The claimant must have a close tie of love and affection with the primary victim;
- The claimant must be present at the event or its immediate aftermath – i.e. they must be present in the proximity of time and space;
- The psychiatric injury must have been caused by the direct perception of a shocking or horrific event or its immediate aftermath. Shock in this context involves the sudden appreciation by sight or sound of a horrifying event which violently agitates the mind.
What damages can be claimed?
Damages can be broken down into two different classes of loss: general and special damages.
General Damages
These are usually damages awardable for pain, suffering and loss of amenity. They are calculated by reference to Judicial college guidelines and case law. They can also include a loss of enjoyment of a certain activity or employment or being disadvantaged on the labour market because of the injuries sustained by the victim.
Special Damages
These are damages for out-of-pocket expenses; both past and future and include for example the following:
- Gratuitous care and assistance provided by friends and family due to injury
- Loss of earnings, past and future
- Private treatment and rehabilitation costs
- Equipment or aids required to make living arrangements and getting around easier
- Cost of modifications to cars
- Travel expenses
Who is a claim brought against and who pays the compensation?
In this instance, the driver will be the responsible party or ‘Defendant’. Road traffic insurance is mandatory.
Road traffic insurance kicks in when the injury is caused by or arising out of the use of a motor vehicle. The answer is clear cut in this instance.
In this case there may be one of two possibilities. There is either an insurance policy in place on the vehicle that collided with the community or there was no insurance on the vehicle.
If the vehicle was not insured at the time of the accident, an organisation known as the Motor Insurers’ Bureau are under an obligation to satisfy any judgments and compensation can be recovered.
Assuming the absence of a medical event that could exclude liability, where there is an insurer associated with a vehicle, the obligation is on the insurer under a policy of insurance, and in the event of their being no insurer the obligation should rest with the Motor Insurers’ Bureau under the Motor Insurers’ Bureau agreements.
Deliberate acts intended to cause injury are usually excluded from insurance policies. Despite this, the law has developed to the effect that even though there may be a contractual exclusion in the policy of insurance i.e. the operation or action is not insured or the vehicle is being used for an excluded purpose, the insurers may still have to pay damages.
Under Section 151 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, subject to certain conditions and exceptions, the insurer of a vehicle can become what is known as an Article 75 insurer and is under a duty to satisfy a judgment even if the person driving is not insured in most cases. If there is an insurer who can meet the claim, then it is not usually unsatisfied, but if there is no such insurer, the MIB will meet the claim if any judgments are unsatisfied i.e. not paid within 7 days.
In conclusion, it is likely that all the people who have been injured as a result of the collision on Water Street will be entitled to claim compensation.
