The wheelchair-bound 45-year-old can no longer move his body below the neck and now lives in a nursing home. He claims he should have been warned of the risks and is now suing an adventure centre CRS Adventures Ltd in Dartmoor, Devon, where the accident happened. Children took part in wellie throwing as part of a mini-Olympics session – with the teachers handicapped by having to throw backwards through their legs.
But Mr Blair-Ford’s legal team claims the way they were instructed to do it was unsafe. Barrister Nathan Tavares told the High Court: ‘The greater the effort employed in this method of throw, the greater the risk of falling forwards unprotected.’ The former head of design and technology had treatment at three hospitals after the 2007 accident and is now at a care home near his former address in Bromley, south London.
The devout Christian requires ventilator support 23 hours per day and is dependant on others for everything. His lawyers are asking for a compensation package worth more than £5million to fund the full-time care he will need for the rest of his life. CRS Adventures denies liability, arguing the throwing method was not unsafe and the risk of serious injury was ‘not foreseeable’.
4 comments:
Hi-
Can you tell me what welly wanging is? I thought it was something perverse.
As a Head of Design and Technology, I'm sure he's expected, as ALL teachers are, to conduct constant risk assessments, and his specific focus on design and technology suggest he should understand mass and momentum, centre of gravity, etc.
In short, he, by definition, should have been able to forsee the risk of overbalancing at least as well, if not better, than any other person there.
It's a tragic accident, but it's not somebody else's fault.
@ Anonymous,
Welly-wanging is a sport involving throwing a wellington boot as far as possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellie_wanging
A sport, eh?
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