Poppleton v Trustees of Portsmouth Youth Activities Committee, [2008] EWCA Civ 646
Citation:Poppleton v Trustees of Portsmouth Youth Activities Committee, [2008] EWCA Civ 646
Rule of thumb:If you sustain an injury on an adventure trip, such as rock climbing etc, can you get damages for this? It depends – if there was a risk which you were not warned about then, perhaps, ‘yes’; if you did something which you were clearly trained not to or was prohibited then probably ‘no’.
Judgment:
The basic facts of this case were that a group of young people did took part in simulated rock climbing without safety harnesses. The people doing this were not given any warnings, provided with any information and nor was the experience of the climbers taken into account, albeit there were some prohibited actions listed. Poppleton saw one of the other climbers do a move which was prohibited, in jumping from one wall to a steel girder, and he attempted to do this. Poppleton fell on his head on the ground and suffered extremely serious and permanent injuries – he was tetraplegic. The Court held that this was a voluntary assumption of risk by Poppleton, ‘adults who chose to engage in physical activities, which obviously give rise to a degree of unavoidable risk may find that they have no means of recompense if the risk materialises so that they are injured. The risk of falling from the wall was plainly obvious … It is quite obvious that no amount of matting will avoid absolutely the risk of possibly severe injury from an awkward fall, that possibility of an awkward fall is an obvious inherent risk of this kind of climbing. If the law required training or supervision in this case, it would equally be required for a multitude of other common place leisure activities, which nevertheless carry with them a degree of obvious inherent risk-as for instance bathing in the sea’, LJ May.
Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.