Woman ordered to pay insurance company for traffic accident

A traffic accident in Rabat has cost one woman dearly after she was ordered to pay an eye-watering €14,137 to an insurance company for a head-on collision which she was adjudged to be at fault for.

Elmo Insurance filed proceedings in the First Hall of the Civil Court against Sharon Gatt over a traffic accident that occurred on 10 January 2014 in Triq it-Tiġrija, Rabat. Lilian Muscat had been driving her husband’s Jeep Compass when it collided with Gatt’s Peugeot 106.

Elmo Insurance had paid Muscat, who was insured with them, €14,012 to make good for the damages caused to her car. It then sued Gatt, holding her responsible for the collision.

Muscat insisted that Gatt had taken a bend at high speed and skidded into the opposite lane, while Gatt claimed the opposite. Police witnesses told the court of 12-metre brake marks from Gatt’s lane, leading into Muscat’s. Although Gatt argued that unlike hers, the other vehicle was fitted with ABS and therefore left no brakemarks, Judge Lawrence Mintoff, deciding the case, held that this argument did not hold water. Although ABS would make a car safer in an emergency, it was not true that the vehicle equipped with it would not leave skid marks.

The judge described the case as a typical case of conflicting accounts with both sides blaming the other. The parties agreed that the road was wet with dew and that had the cars stuck to their lanes, the incident would have been avoided.

The judge observed that from the evidence, including police sketches, it emerged that it had been Gatt’s excessive speed on a bend with a wet surface which led to the fateful skid.

The evidence showed that it was probable that Gatt had been driving at 46km/hr not at 40km/hr as she had claimed.

“From the dynamics of the inċident, from the position of the vehicles after the accident, it emerges that it is not true that the plaintiff had been driving in the middle of the road and even, if for the sake of the arguement, neither of the cars was in its proper lane, had the defendant not been driving too fast, it would have been easier for both drivers to correct their position before getting too close to each other.”

The judge added that Muscat had found an unexpected and unavoidable obstacle in her path while Gatt had placed herself in a position where she could not control her vehicle due to its speed.

The court ruled that Gatt was solely responsible for the accident and ordered her to pay €14,137.