Successful recovery following fatal cycling accident

Our personal injury team represented the wife of a man who was killed in a cycling accident in the Peak District when a motorbike lost control on a corner and hit him head on. Although our client’s husband was retired, we made a dependency claim based not just on the loss of care and help in the home a wife would expect but also on the healthy pension her husband would have expected to receive had he survived.

The defendant tried unsuccessfully to argue that the pension loss claim was not recoverable under section 4 of the Fatal Accidents Act 1976. The case was complicated by our client’s slowly degenerating condition of ataxia which, while possibly decreasing life expectancy and, therefore, the multiplier, also increased the amount of help around the house she would have expected from her husband in later years. The claim involved funeral expenses, damage to property including an Argon 18 bicycle worth £7,350, the statutory bereavement award, the loss of intangible benefits from a husband plus financial and service dependency.

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