Matthew Boyle

Personal Injury

Matthew’s experience is concentrated in the following areas:

• Catastrophic injuries: principally quantum only cases featuring traumatic brain injuries or life changing spinal injuries. Recent experience includes involvement in two subtle brain injury claims where damages in excess of £1m are claimed and where capacity, future care and residual earnings are all hotly contested.
• Fatal Accident Act claims: Matthew is regularly asked to advise on complex claims for financial dependency. He appeared in the High Court case of Mosson which clarified the recoverability of a number of heads of loss (loss of a spouse, probate, the cost of a wake) under the 1976 Act.
• Road traffic and employers’ liability cases: typically where liability is in dispute or where substantial damages are claimed. He has significant experience of cross-examining accident reconstruction and other liability experts. Recent trial experience includes the successful defence of a motorist sued following a fatal collision with a speeding motorcyclist.
• Chronic pain: Matthew often advises in cases where an apparently minor accident has resulted in complaints of significant ongoing disability and potential issues of exaggeration or malingering arise.
• Public liability claims: Matthew’s experience includes a number of sporting injury cases (arising from rugby, bouldering and skiing accidents) where liability has been successfully resisted at trial.

Claims Relating to Physical & Sexual Abuse

Matthew has acted for Claimants and institutional Defendants in cases of intentional physical and sexual abuse, including those featuring historic allegations. He is sensitive to the human and tactical considerations that typically arise in such cases.

Recent experience has included joint settlement meetings in which he has acted for local education authorities who have successfully recovered their outlay from former employees who carried out sexual abuse upon minors.

Matthew’s recent experience in this field has included:

June 2017

P v London Borough of X

This was a litigated claim in which Matthew acted for the Defendant education authority. The case arose out of an historic rape allegation by a student against a school caretaker, who had pleaded guilty and received a term of imprisonment. Matthew drafted the Defence and advised on bringing the perpetrator into the proceedings as a third party. He then acted at a successful joint settlement meeting, achieving a good result for the authority by simultaneously minimizing its outlay and recovering the majority of it from the perpetrator.

September 2017

T v A City Council

This claim concerned the alleged abuse of a vulnerable minor by a foster parent engaged by the social services department of the local authority. Matthew drafted the Defence and advised on a number of issues. These included (a) whether vicarious liability could arise on the part of the Council in the particular circumstances and (b) consideration of how the Bolam test applied to the decisions made by social workers in relation to the handling of the foster parent and the placement of the Claimant. The case is on-going.

December 2017

Re: a Sports Organisation

Matthew advised a well-known sporting body (in conjunction with leading Counsel) on the heads of loss recoverable in sexual abuse claims.

January 2018

London Borough of Y v A

This case arose out of sexual abuse upon a young student by a school teacher. Following the successful resolution of the claim, Matthew acted for the education authority in recovering its outlay against the teaching pension of the perpetrator.

Selected Cases

• Mosson v Spousal (London) Limited [2016] EWHC 53 (QB) – Counsel for the Defendant in the leading High Court case on recoverable losses under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous) Provisions Act 1934 and the Fatal Accidents Act 1976.
• Sutton v Syston Rugby Football Club [2011] EWCA Civ 1182 – A successful appearance in the Court of Appeal (on behalf of the appellant), in a case concerning the standard of care to be expected of rugby clubs towards their players.
• Huscroft v P & O Ferries [2010] EWCA 1483 – Matthew has had involvement in a wide range of employers’ and public liability claims. His experience includes RTA, tripping and slipping claims, cases against occupiers and those relating to defective premises. He has a particular interest in pure psychiatric injury and was involved in claims arising out of the Chancery Lane derailment. He is also fully conversant with all aspects of the CPR, including an appearance in the Court of Appeal on the correct ambit of CPR 3.1(3).
• Davies v Global Securities [2010] EWCA Civ 648 – Junior counsel in a case which the Court of Appeal considered the extent of a military contractor’s duty to an operative working in post- invasion Iraq.
• Phillips v Henlys Limited [2006] EWHC 1806 – Mathew’s trial experience includes a four day VWF claim heard in the High Court.
• Hartman v South Essex Mental Health & Community Care NHS Trust [2005] EWCA Civ 06 – Matthew was junior Counsel (on behalf of Staffordshire University) in the group of cases heard by the Court of Appeal.
• Slipper v Pamire – Round table settlement of a £1.3m head injury case involving a 23-year-old claimant with a severe traumatic brain injury and resultant life-long care requirements.

News

• Matthew Boyle successfully resists claim against employer of cleaner who was violently assaulted – Central London County Court
• Matthew Boyle obtains finding of fundamental dishonesty after PI claim discontinued

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Articles

• Testing the limits of illegality as a defence to civil claims: the Supreme Court decisions in Henderson v Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust and Stoffel & Co v Grondona
• The onward march of vicarious liability: the Barclays Bank group litigation [2018] Civ 1670

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Qualifications

• MA Jurisprudence (First Class), Lincoln College, University of Oxford

Memberships

• PIBA
• PNBA