Woman boss who broke a wrist in fall outside pub sues for £4m
(She’s already won £156,000!)
A WOMAN executive is demanding £4.2million in damages after tripping over a marker rope outside a fashionable gastropub and fracturing her left wrist.
Despite the fact she is right handed, Carmen Mazo, 43, claims the accident outside has ‘destroyed’ her £168,000-a-year career in human resources.
She claims that the injury, sustained when she tripped over a garden marker rope in August 2009, has also made her look as though she self-harms because of the scars on her wrist.
She won a £156,871 payout in 2013 after the The Westbourne Pub in trendy Notting Hill, West London admitted liability – but has won an appeal to have her case reviewed by three senior judges.
The pub is owned by artist Sebastian Boyle and celebrities such as Cara Delevingne and Lady Gaga have been photographed there.
The HR consultant, who claims she once expected to earn £700 a day, claims a ‘bartender’s irresponsibility’ means she will have to start at the bottom of the career ladder again.
In a statement, Miss Mazo, previously a director at Move on Consulting which was dissolved in 2014, said that she will be forced to retrain in another career after being left with posttraumatic arthritis.
She said: ‘I have been left with what I consider to be horrendous scars on my wrist from the surgery, which I am extremely conscious of.
‘The fact that I have been left with major scarring on my wrist, which to an unsympathetic observer might look like I am prone to self-harm, is very distressing for me.’ She added: ‘My career has always been my refuge to block away unpleasant circumstances in my personal life, but now I am finding that because of a bartender’s irresponsibility I could end up with no career or purpose in life.’
She claims that the injuries have left her with ‘rollercoaster’
‘I don’t think I’ll be my old self again’
mood changes during which she vacillates from anger to sadness. ‘I am easily irritated and I lose my temper very easily, then end up breaking into tears when I realise that I was never like that before.
‘ The accident has totally destroyed my work and social life, changing me such that I do not think that I will ever be my old self again,’ she said.
Despite returning to work several months after the injury, Miss Mazo, who is understood to originally be from Spain, gave up her position three years later.
During a hearing at Central London County Court in 2013, she was awarded £156,871.
But Judge Heather Baucher rejected her claim to £4.2million after she found that the injury was not bad enough to justify Miss Mazo quitting her job.
Now, she has been granted permission to take her claim to the Court of Appeal after a top judge said Judge Baucher could be wrong. Her barrister Peter Sefton QC argued: ‘ Her wrist was badly injured, she made a remarkable recovery. The issue is what happens next.’ Granting Miss Mazo permission to take the loss-ofcareer point to the Appeal Court, Lord Justice Laws said: ‘It seems to me that she is entitled to have the matter examined in this court.’
A date for the hearing has not yet been set.