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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Verdon v B Y Hotels (Bournemouth) Ltd [2002] EWCA Civ 1270 (28 August 2002)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1270.html
Cite as: [2002] EWCA Civ 1270
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE BOURNEMOUTH COUNTY COURT
(MR RECORDER LAMB)
Strand London WC2A 2LL Wednesday 28 August 2002 |
||
B e f o r e :
____________________
| ZORAIDA VERDON | ||
| Claimant/Applicant | ||
| - v - | ||
| B Y HOTELS (BOURNEMOUTH) LTD | ||
| Defendant/Respondent |
____________________
Smith Bernal Reporting Limited, 190 Fleet Street,
London EC4A 2AG
Tel: 020 7421 4040 Fax: 020 7831 8838
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
The Defendant did not attend and was not represented.
____________________
Crown Copyright ©
- LORD JUSTICE TUCKEY: This is an application by Zoraida Verdon for permission to appeal from a judgment given by Mr Recorder Lamb QC, in the Bournemouth County Court, in which he dismissed the applicant's claim for damages for personal injuries against her former employers.
- On 2 September 1997, whilst working as an assistant housekeeper at the defendant's Courtlands Hotel in Bournemouth, the appellant fell off a chair on which she was standing into a wardrobe in one of the hotel bedrooms. She alleged that she had to stand on the chair to reach a duvet on the top shelf of the wardrobe which she had been instructed to put on the bed in the bedroom. This was, she said, the only way she could reach the duvet. It was unsafe. She had not been given any training or provided with steps to reach the shelf as she should have been. She alleged that she has not worked since this accident.
- The judge found that the applicant's evidence was untruthful. He accepted evidence called on behalf of the defendant that she had worked in 1998 and 1999 at the Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth. On the issue of liability, he accepted the evidence of the hotel manager, Mr Martin, and the housekeeper, Mrs Barker, that there was no duvet on the top shelf of the wardrobe, and no reason, therefore, why the defendant should have foreseen what happened. In any event, the judge found that there was a 4ft metal step ladder in the housekeeping cupboard and that the applicant had been shown where the steps were and how to use them by Mrs Barker. The judge concluded that the applicant had failed to establish that the accident was caused by any omission on the defendant's part.
- The applicant represented herself at trial, as she does today. Her complaint is that the trial was unfair. She has elaborated that in her notice of appeal, her skeleton argument and in a further typed statement which she has produced today which I have read. That statement repeats the case that she sought to make at trial and the allegations which she made against the defendants. As to unfairness, the applicant complains that the judge had failed to take into consideration a medical report from a Dr Mounce who treated her after the accident; that the solicitors for the defendants had not included in the trial bundle documents which the applicant says would have supported her case; that she had not been allowed to present her case by the judge who appeared to want to listen only to the defendants; that they were represented and that their legal representatives took advantage of her appearing, as she did, in person.
- I have obviously read through all the papers submitted by the applicant with these complaints in mind, but I can see nothing in the papers to substantiate her complaints of unfairness. The medical evidence which the judge apparently refused to admit went only to the issue of quantum. Here, the applicant failed on liability. To have any prospect of success in this court, it is the judge's finding of no liability which the applicant must attack. On that issue, the judge's simple task was to resolve the conflict of oral evidence which he heard between the applicant on the one hand and Mr Martin and Mrs Barker on the other. There is nothing to suggest that he did this unfairly. The applicant's real complaint is that he should have accepted her evidence and that she should have won, but the judge did not accept her evidence. As I tried to explain to the applicant, this court, as a Court of Appeal, will not interfere with judge's findings of fact of this kind for the simple reason that we do not see and hear the witnesses. The trial judge does.
- The applicant further relies on what was revealed when her solicitor went to visit the hotel on the 26 January 1999. She has produced a photograph of the inside of the one of the housekeeping cupboards and a photograph of the 4ft metal steps, which the defendant said were available for the applicant's use on the day of the accident. She alleges that there were no steps on the day of the accident. She suggests that steps were produced simply for the purpose of her solicitor's visit. The ones he was shown are covered in paint and look as if they have been produced out of a builder's skip simply to show that steps were available for her use.
- These allegations do not advance the applicant's case. The judge made the findings of fact to which I have referred, including the finding that steps were available. Although I entirely understand that the applicant is very dissatisfied with those findings, there is no way that I can see that this court will interfere with them.
- The judge having rejected the applicant's evidence, I can see that her proposed appeal has no prospect of success and, therefore, her application for permission to appeal must be dismissed.