Liability of police for injuries caused by pursued vehicles – ASB v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis

A claim brought by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau and two Article 75 insurers against the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis was abandoned on November 19th 2025 during the closing stages of the trial before Ritchie J in the High Court.

The anonymised claimant, ASB, suffered catastrophic brain injury when he was struck at high speed by a BMW car driven by the first defendant while cycling home from work along Forest Road, E17.  The first defendant was attempting to evade pursuit by an unmarked police vehicle using lights and sirens and had driven at speeds of 100mph or more on a road with a 30mph speed limit.  The first defendant had lost control on a bend and struck a traffic island which caused his car to rotate violently, hitting ASB.  The first defendant was disqualified from driving at the time and had obtained insurance fraudulently.  He fled the scene of the accident and a painstaking investigation had to be undertaken to prove that he had been driving the BMW at the time of the vehicle.  He was subsequently sentenced to 50 months’ imprisonment for causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

The insurers having obtained declarations that they were entitled to set aside the insurance policies which had been issued due to misrepresentation, ASB’s advisers brought a claim against the MIB and one of the insurers.  The MIB required ASB to bring a claim against the Commissioner, arguing that the police driver had been negligent in his decision to initiate and maintain the dispute.  ASB’s claim was settled for an eight figure sum at a mediation and the MIB took an assignment of his cause of action against the Commissioner.  The Commissioner defended the claim on four bases: (i) no duty of care was owed to ASB by the police driver in relation to his decision-making as to the initiation and continuation of the pursuit, (ii) the driver’s decision-making was not negligent, (iii) the first defendant’s reckless driving constituted a novus actus interveniens, and (iv) any breach of duty did not cause the accident because the outcome would have been the same.

The court had directed, over the objection of the MIB and insurers, that the parties should have permission to instruct experts in advanced police driving.  The experts eventually agreed that the only point at which the police driver’s decision to maintain the dispute could be criticised was at a point when traffic lights turned amber against him, some 10-15 seconds before the accident occurred, at which time the police vehicle was well over 100 metres behind the BMW.

During closing submissions for the Commissioner, Ritchie J questioned whether it could be right that the police became liable for the criminal driving of the first defendant by pursuing him and attempting to enforce the law, and also indicated that he was struggling to see how, even if the pursuit had been terminated when the traffic light changed against the police driver, the outcome would have been any different.  At the end of the submissions, leading counsel for the MIB and insurers asked for time to take instructions and returned to announce that he had been instructed to discontinue the claim against the Commissioner.  The Commissioner sought an order that his costs should be paid on the indemnity basis and Ritchie J agreed, stating that it seemed to him “utterly clear” that the insurance defendants’ case on factual causation “from the start was at best speculative but probably, on the balance of probabilities, far-fetched” and found that the bringing of the case had been ”out of the norm” so as to justify an award of indemnity costs.

Paul Stagg KC of Deka Chambers represented the Commissioner.