£30k payout for gran who fell down hotel steps

A GRANDMOTHER accused of being ‘staggering drunk’ and wearing ‘silly shoes’ when she fell over during a Greek island holiday has won more than £30,000 in compensation.

Carole Peters, pictured, injured her head and fractured her right arm when she fell while descending a set of steps at a hotel on Santorini.

She sued the tour operator – but a court heard witnesses said she was ‘clearly drunk and smelt of alcohol’ and wearing ‘inappropriate’ footwear.

Yesterday, however, she was awarded a payout after a judge rejected the hotel’s ‘aggressive’ claims that she had been ‘very drunk indeed’.

In reality she had not drunk a drop and, far from sporting ‘silly shoes’, she was wearing flat sandals, ruled Judge James Howlett. The 60-year-old had rejected claims she was ‘a party animal’ who got drunk on the last night of her holiday because ‘the combination of heat and alcohol did not agree with her’. The hotel’s management pointed out that 30 of her holiday snaps showed her ‘in circumstances where alcohol was being consumed’. Her husband, Kim, had also been photographed wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo ‘Beer Disposal Team’.

But Judge Howlett described her as a ‘steady and clear witness’, and accepted that ‘neither she nor her husband had drunk any alcohol that evening’.

The couple, of Torbay, Devon, were on a two-week TUI package holiday in June 2011. They had enjoyed a meal at the Hotel Iliada in Perivolos when Mrs Peters fell down steps leading to the hotel pool. Central London County Court heard she had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. She had claimed £50,000 compensation but the judge ruled that she bore 25 per cent responsibility because she was ‘not paying proper attention’.

Judge Howlett said the main cause of her fall was that there was no hand rail on the right hand side of the steps. TUI UK Ltd was ordered to pay £33,750 damages, although it can reclaim its loss from the hotel’s owners.