Welland 2019 Dyno test of Boadicea

[Earl Kitchener]

A brief resume of the case can be found here I would draw attention to paragraph 2 of the comments.

The claim and counterclaim that are the concern of the case are irrelevant to the point I was making which hinges on the use of the vehicle under RTA cover. In UK law this has always been taken to indemnify the insured against claims in the case of accidents arising from the normal use of the vehicle on a road or public place. Normal use includes, and this is backed by case law, leaving a broken down car on the road until it can be recovered and such things. Incidents that would arise out of the normal use of the vehicle. This is the minimum cover required under the act applied with common sense as to what most would accept as use of the vehicle. I don't doubt that other policies confer more cover but as it happens my current cover excludes claims arising from the use of any cutting and welding equipment in the course of repairs.

Now in para 53 of the judgement Lord Hodge says

53. In my view, neither English domestic case law nor the jurisprudence of the
CJEU supports the view that the carrying out of significant repairs to a vehicle on
private property entails the “use” of the vehicle. The English case law which
interprets “use” in the RTA as “having the use of” makes good sense in the context
of vehicles which have been left on a road or in a public place, where members of
the public are likely to encounter them, but less sense if applied without qualification
to vehicles located on private property. In ordinary language one would not speak
of a person who is conducting substantial repairs to a stationary vehicle as “using”
that vehicle,

Now it seems to me that this indicates quite clearly that in assessing liability the courts could well be asked to give a decision on whether any activity with a vehicle could be construed as the 'use' of that vehicle under the act as it has been interpreted up until now.
Lord Hodge also refers in para 38 to a 2017 case where a tractor fitted with a herbicide pumping kit ran way and crushed a worker while it was being used as a stationary pump.

He notes that the European Court said:

the concept of “use of vehicles” covers “any use of a vehicle as a means of transport”
(para 38). The fact that a vehicle was stationary or that its engine was not running at
the time of the accident did not preclude the use falling within the scope of its
function as a means of transport (para 39). But the concept of “use of vehicles” did
not cover a circumstance in which the tractor’s principal function, at the time of the
accident, was not to serve as a means of transport but to generate, as a machine for
carrying out work, the motive power necessary to drive the pump of a herbicide
sprayer (para 42 and the dispositif).


These are simply matters to which i think it wise to draw attention.