Hit-and-run case goes to Parliament

Ken Moore wants to lodge his appeal against his legal defeat by the Department of Transport with the country's highest court.

But there is no legal aid available for his case to make an appeal extremely costly for him to mount and he only has about a month to approach the Lords.

He has pledged to do his best to overcome both obstacles on behalf of the thousands of other people who are injured in accidents.

"In the name of justice, this has to be done," he declared. "I will have to find a way of going to the Lords somehow for the sake of the 20,000 people a year in hit and run crashes. It must be done.

"They are not being treated the same as everyone else involved in accidents."

Mr Moore's legal fight dates from the time he was seriously injured in an accident in London.

He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company with his career in front of him when he was knocked off his motorbike by a hit and run driver in April 1995.

He had just opened in Thomas Southern's 1690s play, The Wife's Excuse, but, at the age of 28, his injuries included five brain haemorrhages, spinal injuries which have left him in pain and a damaged pituitary gland which gave him diabetes.

He was in a coma for 5-10 days immediately after the crash and has never been able to return to his stage career at a time when his contemporaries have achieved fame.

The driver who struck him has never been traced. This left Mr Moore, of East Close, with no one to sue.

He turned, instead, for compensation to the Motor Insurers' Bureau. This was set up in 1946 to pay out to victims of untraced or uninsured drivers.

The MIB awarded Mr Moore 376,000. This was increased by arbitration to 585,000 in 2000.

However, Mr Moore argued this was too little to make up for all that he had suffered.

This was far short of the 1.1m to which he believed he was entitled.

He also claimed it was too little under a 1983 European Union directive which he claimed the government had failed to properly adopt into British law.

The directive demanded all EU member states must ensure that victims of uninsured or untraced drivers received at least the same compensation as other road accident victims.

When his case reached the Appeal Court, Lord Justice Waller acknowledged that Mr Moore's argument was correct and that he was entitled to a payout.

But the judge said his cause for action against the government had arisen when the accident occurred in 1995.

Mr Moore was, therefore, well outside the three year deadline to take legal action.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Moore said he could hardly have begun legal action when he was in coma or recovering straight afterwards.

"The MIB is very quick to pay out when it is a minor injury involved '“ 5,000 for whiplash and 2,000 for a broken hand '“ but they become adversial as soon as they get a big claim.

"They have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of money fighting some of the most vulnerable victims of society."

The bureau describes its role as handling claims in accordance with the agreements between MIB and the Government.

The MIB is restricted to paying compensation in respect of liability for property damage or injury arising from an accident that has occurred either on a road or a public place in accordance with the Road Traffic Act 1988 and subsequent regulations.

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