The court took a strict view of a vehicle owner’s potential liability to injured third parties.
Held: A person who suffered injury by reason of a breach of s35 could maintain an action in damages for that breach: ‘The Road Traffic Act, 1930, under which the question arises, was passed in these circumstances: it had become apparent that people who were injured by the negligent driving of motor cars were in a parlous situation if the negligent person was unable to pay damages. Accordingly two statutes were passed, one for the purpose of enabling persons who were thus injured to recover, in the case of the bankruptcy of an insured defendant the money which would be payable to him by the insurance company. Parliament enacted that in such circumstances the insurance money should go not to the general creditors of the bankrupt defendant but to the injured person; in other words the injured person, although not a party to the insurance could make the insurance company liable. That Act-the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act, 1930, did not meet the whole difficulty that had arisen because motor car owners sometimes lent their cars to uninsured persons, and if a person who borrowed a car and in driving it caused injury to a third person the remedy provided by that Act did not avail the injured person. Consequently the Road Traffic Act, 1930, was passed for the very purpose of making provision for third parties who suffered injury by the negligent driving of motor vehicles by uninsured persons to whom the insured owner had lent such vehicles. How could Parliament make provision for their protection from such risks if it did not enable an injured third person to recover for a breach of s.35? That section which is in Part II of the Act headed ‘Provision against third-party risks arising out of the use of motor vehicles,’ would indeed be no protection to a person injured by the negligence of an uninsured person to whom a car had been lent by the insured owner, if no civil remedy were available for a breach of the section.’
Greer LJ
[1935] 1 KB 75, [1934] All ER 373
Road Traffic Act 1930 35
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Philip Owen Lloyd-Wolper v Robert Moore; National Insurance Guarantee Corporation Plc, Charles Moore CA 22-Jun-2004
The first defendant drove a car belonging to his father and insured by his father. The father consented to the driving but under a mistaken belief that his son was licensed. The claimant was injured by the defendant in a road traffic accident.
Cited – Campbell v Gordon SC 6-Jul-2016
The employee was injured at work, but in a way excluded from the employers insurance cover. He now sought to make the sole company director liable, hoping in term to take action against the director’s insurance brokers for negligence, the director . .
Applied – McLeod v Buchanan HL 1940
Buchanan allowed his brother to use a vehicle without restriction as to the purpose of use; Buchanan did not actually know (although he had reason to think) that the vehicle the subject of the permission was being used for private purposes. The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 22 October 2021; Ref: scu.199929
