MAIB to pay after car crash appeal

THE Motor Accidents Insurance Board will be required to pay all costs associated with a serious car crash in 2008 which left a young man with catastrophic injuries, after an appeal before the Full Court in Hobart.

In June 2008, Mitchel House, then 18, was driving on the Bass Highway from Wiltshire to work at Smithton at 2am when he crashed into a group of steers that had wandered on to the road from a neighbouring property.

He suffered catastrophic injuries and was left unable to communicate and totally dependent on his parents.

In 2009, the MAIB began action against Michael and Lexie Lester, the owners of the property adjoining the highway whom the cattle belonged to, as well Circular Head Fencing, which had done work for the Lesters in 2007. It was found the steers had broken out of a gate that had been worked on by the company.

Last year, Justice Shan Tennent found the MAIB was entitled to recover, from the Lesters and Circular Head Fencing, associated costs already paid, or to be paid, to Mr House.

“Each of the Lesters and [Circular Head Fencing] exhibited failures,” Justice Tennent said. She found the Lesters were to be responsible for 65 per cent of the liability and the fencing company 35 per cent.

The amount of damages was not decided at the time and the Lesters and Circular Head Fencing appealed against the decision.

Before Chief Justice Alan Blow and justices Robert Pearce and Michael Brett in the Supreme Court in Hobart yesterday, the Full Court allowed both appeals and set aside the earlier judgment by Justice Tennent.

The MAIB was ordered to pay the costs of both appeals and the original action.