£1m compensation bid for injured actor fails

If Kenneth Dudley Moore had won his case against the Department of Transport, the law on how victims of untraced or uninsured drivers are compensated would have had to be re-written.

In a unique case, Mr Moore' lawyers claimed the government had failed to obey European law dictats that those in his position must be no less generously compensated than victims of accidents where the negligent driver is identified and properly insured.

But judge, Mr Justice Eady, said he had left it too late to launch his case against the DoT and, in any event, his claim for government compensation had no real prospect of succeeding.

Mr Moore, now 40 and who went under the stage name of Ken Dudley, was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company with a glittering acting career ahead of him when he was knocked off his motorbike by a hit-and-run driver in April 1995, London's High Court earlier heard.

Aged just 28 at the time, he suffered devastating head wounds, resulting in brain damage, spinal injuries which left him in constant pain along with post traumatic stress disorder.

But, as the driver who struck him was never traced, he had no one he could sue and he had to fall back on making a claim against the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB), an industry body set up to compensate victims of untraced or uninsured drivers.

The MIB awarded him 376,000 and, although that was increased by an arbitrator to 585,000 in February 2002, Mr Moore, who claimed to be the victim of '˜manifest unfairness and injustice', argued that was still nowhere near enough to compensate him for all he had suffered.

His counsel, Mr Robert Seabrook QC, said that, had the negligent driver been traced and insured, Mr Moore would have been able to sue him and, had his case been heard by a judge, he would have been awarded almost 1.2 million in damages.

The QC argued Mr Moore had been gravely under-compensated for his injuries simply because the UK Government had failed to properly '˜transpose' into domestic law a 1983 EU Directive.

The directive demanded that all EU member states put in place systems to ensure that victims of uninsured or untraced drivers receive at least the same level of compensation as other road accident victims '“ but that had never been done, argued the barrister.

Mr Moore, of East Close, Middleton-on-Sea, sued the DoT for more than 600,000, being the difference between the sum he was handed by the arbitrator and the amount he says he would have been awarded by a judge.

He also claimed almost 70,000 in interest and costs, accusing the government of breaching community law.

However, striking out those claims today, Mr Justice Eady said Mr Moore had launched his case against the DoT outside the legal time limit and his case was therefore statute barred.