A pensioner who was crippled when he fell from a 150-year-old park footbridge today called for new safety measures after winning a multi-million-pound High Court case.
Christopher Edwards, 68, was pushing his bike across the Victorian stone bridge in Beddington Park when he fell over a low parapet and broke his back.
Mr Edwards, who now uses a wheelchair, sued Sutton council claiming the bridge was a health and safety hazard.
A senior judge ruled that the crossing posed a “foreseeable” risk and that the council was 60 per cent responsible.
Today Mr Edwards said: “My life was changed for ever on that day in a place which I expected to be safe … I hope this encourages local authorities to consider the safety of park-users so that situations like this never happen again.”
During the High Court hearing he told how his bike had dragged him to one side and sent him tumbling over the parapet in September 2010.
“The path narrowed and there were old tree roots. You wouldn’t dare ride your bike past that,” he said.
“The bike caught on something and I completely fell off the bridge. I fell over the side and on to the rocks beneath me. I don’t know what I hit first. I remember two bangs as I hit the rocks.
“It happened so quickly. I hit my head a couple of times on the way down.
“My wife Elizabeth got in and pulled my head out of the water. I was unable to move and had to be lifted out of the river.”
Mrs Edwards said: “I saw Chris falling. He started to move his arms in an attempt to regain his balance and, for a moment, it looked like he was going to succeed. But then his balance tipped the other way and over he went.”
Judge Allan Gore QC rejected the council’s claim that Mr Edwards had been riding his bike and described the pensioner and his wife as straight-foward and honest witnesses.
Mr Edwards said his accident could have been prevented by simple precautions, including guard rails on the “mossy and slippy” bridge.
Andrew Warnock QC, for the council, said that fitting handrails to the crossing would cause “incalculable aesthetic and cultural” damage.
But the judge found that the council had never carried out a proper risk assessment of the bridge. It owed park- users a duty to protect them from the danger — if not by major structural work to the bridge, then at least by simple warning signs and information about alternative routes, he said.
Outside court Mr Edwards’s lawyers, Stewarts Law, confirmed the claim was for “multi-million-pound” damages.
