A review of DSN v Blackpool FC and its implications for sexual abuse claims in English football

Judgment has recently been handed down in the High Court in London in a claim for compensation for injuries caused by sexual abuse occurring many years ago.   It is the first of many such claims currently going through the English courts against professional football clubs and other sporting organisations.  This was a claim for damages brought against Blackpool Football Club by a claimant who was sexually abused by a scout working for it in the 1980s.  If this case is a measure of the progress being made in these football claims, many may well be resolved before the outcome of The FA Inquiry into Sexual Abuse[1]. 

This article reviews the judgment (available here[2]) and asks what lessons can be learned from it and what its implications are for other similar cases.  The case (which had a separate costs hearing[3]) is also a salutary lesson to defence lawyers about the need to be aware of the dangers of being so confident in the strength of one’s own defence as to rebuff all attempts to settle.  Specifically, it examines:

• What the claim was about
• The legal issues for the Judge
• The Judgment
  • Limitation
  • Vicarious liability
  • Causation
• What the implications are for other cases
• Lessons arising out of the way the case was defended.

By way of disclosure, the author represented the claimant in the case (and is lead counsel on many similar claims).