by A Navy commodore gave “false” evidence in a £500,000 court battle against an injured sailor, a judge has said.
Joleen Williams, 39, suffered a spinal injury while dining at the captain’s table when the frigate HMS St Albans made an unexpected turn while sailing off the south coast of England in October 2014.
She was thrown backwards as the ship turned, hitting her back on a key that was sticking out of a filing cabinet, and commanding officer Catherine Jordan’s heavy wooden table was pinned against it.
The sailor was later medically discharged from the Navy due to back problems in December 2017 and sued the Ministry of Defense for around £500,000 in damages.
Now at Central London County Court, Judge Richard Roberts has ruled in their favour, saying the ship’s crew were negligent in not securing the board to the deck and criticizing her commanding officer at the time, now Commodore Catherine Jordan, for giving “wrong” evidence.
Cdre Jordan had made “irresponsible” statements about where the table was secured, changing her evidence when she realized it could not be linked to where she said it, the judge said.
The amount of compensation Ms Williams will receive will be decided at a later court hearing, unless it is agreed with the MoD out of court.
During the trial in May, Judge Roberts heard that former eminent medical assistant (LMA) Miss Williams was sailing on board HMS St Albans off the Isle of Portland when she was injured.
In her evidence, Miss Williams, from the Poole area, told the court she was ordered to have dinner at the table of the ship’s commanding officer, Catherine Jordan.
“At 20:00 hours, after we had finished the last course of dinner, but the table had yet to be cleared, the ship rolled unexpectedly to the park,” she said.
“There was no warning pipe in advance. I was thrown backwards in my chair with my back against the drawer/filing cabinet.
“The back of my right neck was against the key in the top drawer of the filing cabinet and the table, which was not secured to the deck, passed over me, pressing me against the drawer with my chin down into my neck. .
“I remember my neck and right shoulder hitting the key in the lock and the handle, the force breaking the handle and bending the key in the lock as a result.
“The plates and cutlery on the table came crashing down on me.
“I remember the commanding officer calling up to the bridge and saying to them: ‘What the hell are you doing here? You have just achieved our LMA.”
“It took a few minutes for the other people in the cabin to get the board off me.”
According to claim papers, the former sailor, who most recently worked in finance, was left suffering from neck pain, headaches, low mood and spinal instability, which led to her discharge.
The MoD defended the claim, denying that the captain’s board was unsecured and insisting that the crew had been warned about the shift.
Passing judgment, Judge Roberts praised Miss Williams as an “honest witness”, but said there were “serious inconsistencies and falsehoods in Cdre Jordan’s evidence which seriously undermined her credibility.”
She changed her account of where in the cabin the table was located in several statements, he said, changing her evidence when she realized that if it was in the middle of the room as she had previously said, it could not to be fastened down.
“I think Cdre Jordan changed her evidence regarding the position of the table in her third witness statement, because she realized that if the table was placed in the middle of the cabin, there was no securing mechanism,” he said.
An inconsistency arose in her statements “because her evidence that the table was secured is not true,” he said, criticizing “Cdre Jordan’s callous and negligent attitude to health and safety in her cabin” .
Admitting that her board was not always secured at sea, Cdre Jordan demonstrated a “sub-standard approach to health and safety in her cabin,” described by an expert witness, retired Captain Jon White, as “very bad luck. “.
“I accept the claimant’s evidence, which was consistent throughout, that the board in Cdre Jordan’s cabin was not secured to the deck,” he said.
“I find the MoD’s evidence that the board was secured to the deck to be contradictory and false.
“I can find on the balance of probabilities that the table was not secured to the deck before the index accident and that this was negligent at common law.
“I find that the table moved backwards at an angle, causing the claimant to fall back on the key, which was pushing in from the top drawer of the cabinet.
“I find that the claimant has proved on the balance of probabilities that the MoD was negligent and breached its common law duty of care and that this breach caused the claimant’s injury, loss and damage.”
Although he found that a warning had been given, he said it would not have prevented the injury to Miss Williams, who he also cleared of any personal contribution to the accident.
