By Kim Harrison, APIL president
Looking at Rusty Brown striding confidently along the seafront, no-one would guess that this man is disabled.
Rusty was leading a full and active life when he became a victim of negligence. He was managing a busy pharmacy, he played football several times a week, and he and his partner were keen ramblers, frequently setting off from their home on the south coast of England to tackle the Lake District and the Munros of Scotland.
Rusty was driving home from visiting a friend one ordinary evening when another driver lost control of his car at 106mph in heavy rain, rounded a bend on the wrong side of the road, and hit Rusty head-on. The steering column of Rusty’s car went through his legs, one of which was later amputated below the knee. The negligent driver was jailed for causing serious injury by dangerous driving, failing to stop at the scene, and not reporting a collision. For a while there, Rusty lost his freedom too. He paid a high price for doing nothing wrong. All he did was try to go home. It is an all-too-common story of being a victim of negligence. It could happen to anyone.
Through rehabilitation, being able to buy a safer home, and proper prosthetics which suit him and his lifestyle, Rusty’s life is back on track. Some things are different and there are things he can no longer do, but Rusty does not consider himself to be disabled. And he has climbed Ben Nevis again.
He explains all this in the new short film for APIL’s flagship Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign, called Rusty’s Story.
Today Rusty is back working at the pharmacy and can take trips away with his partner. He has not returned to football. He was a very good player but since his amputation his balance is not what it was. And even with his brilliant prosthetic leg, Rusty gets tired more quickly than he did before his injuries, as is so often the case with amputees as moving around with a limb difference uses up a lot more energy.
Compensation cannot undo what happened, but it can help get people as close as possible to how they were before the negligence.
When we talk about the right to fair compensation for injured people, nothing is more commanding than hearing about it from the victim. I would challenge anyone to get through Rusty’s Story without a visceral reaction. Such is the power of his story that reactions range from horror to awe, to relief then respect.
Rebuilding Shattered Lives is a long-term campaign which is still in its infancy, but it is already starting slowly to build on our ongoing work to shift the mainstream media focus away from the damaging suggestion that compensation is a windfall, to a more thoughtful environment. It is beginning to be understood that victims of negligence have every right to bring a personal injury or clinical negligence claim to help them obtain some redress for what they have suffered, and in many cases will continue to suffer, through no fault of their own.
You can join the movement by sharing Rusty’s Story on social media. Find and follow APIL and Rebuilding Shattered Lives on Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, Instagram (@injuredpeople), LinkedIn, and X.
