Motorcyclist fails in High Court claim against London borough over accident involving manhole cover

A motorcyclist has lost his claim for damages against the London Borough of Hillingdon over an accident involving a manhole cover.

George Morriss sought damages as he thought he fell when the front wheel of his motorcycle slid beneath him when it made contact with the second of two manhole covers on a road named Falling Lane.

Benjamin Douglas-Jones KC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, said in his judgment that Mr Morriss argued the dangerous condition and siting of the two manhole covers led to his loss of control:

He said both - but in particular the second he reached 'manhole 2’ - were worn and polished so that its patterned surface was insufficiently raised to be proud of any accumulated dirt, dust or moisture on its surface.

Mr Morriss said the first manhole was in close proximity to manhole 2 and both were in the middle of the carriageway so that motorcycle riders would naturally travel over them.

Both were on a left hand bend with a dangerous fence supported by steel H-posts on the nearside of the road, so that in the event of a motorcycle collision, any injuries would be compounded by the impact with the fence and posts.

Mr Morriss was an experienced rider who had frequently ridden this route, and the accident occurred in daylight on a dry day with good visibility.

He told the court that as he rode over manhole 2 his front wheel started to lose traction.

The motorcycle’s traction control system engaged and righted itself, but Mr Morriss and the bike then collided with the fence.

He attributed the loss of control to the application of new surfacing causing a drastic change in friction between manhole 2 and the road surface.

But Hillingdon said the road had recently been examined by qualified inspectors who had found nothing amiss.

Mr Douglas-Jones said photographs of both manhole covers “show that the raised pattern is not as it would have been when the [the manhole] was new. It is worn and polished to an extent. However, in my judgment there is nothing remarkable about its condition. The raised patterned surface is still materially higher than the principal surface of the [manholes].”

He noted that three weeks before the incident experienced and qualified inspectors had identified nothing wrong and that one week after the incident another routine inspection found no significant defects.

The judge went on set out a further seven points of evidence all of which supported Hillingdon’s case, including that there was a low accident history at the site and that the manholes did not pose an unusual or unexpected danger to road users exercising reasonable care.

He said evidence given for Mr Morriss by a qualified highways engineer was “inappropriately partisan and exaggerated: the evidence concerning the collision site demonstrably showed it was not the extremely dangerous site that he characterised it to be, not least that there had never been a motorcycle accident there before”.

The judge concluded: “On the basis of the weight of the evidence as a whole, therefore, the claimant has failed to satisfy me on the balance of probabilities that the accident was caused by the front wheel of the motorcycle losing traction on [manhole 2]. The evidence as a whole drives me to the conclusion that the accident probably occurred because of momentary rider error.”

Mark Smulian