Vet challenges inquest verdict

A TRAINEE vet whose car struck and killed a tow-truck driver has launched a ground-breaking bid to overturn an inquest verdict.

Denis Livesley (60), from Leesbrook, Lees, was loading a crashed Volvo on his vehicle on a slipway of the M60 near Sale when Sophie Wilkinson’s Volkswagen Golf skidded on ice and snow and ploughed into him in December 2009. The grandfather-of-eight was pronounced dead on arrival at Trafford General Hospital.

Wilkinson (24), is now attempting, at London’s High Cour, to quash the inquest jury’s verdict of unlawful killing.

Wilkinson’s barrister, James Maxwell-Scott, said she felt passionately that such a verdict should not be available in such cases because they risked turning inquests into a fault-finding exercise.

Such verdicts, he argued, put drivers on alert in case an unlawful-killing verdict triggered a referral to the CPS — leaving them with little choice but to blame the victim and effectively put the deceased on trial.

Mr Justice Foskett and Judge Peter Thornton QC are expected to reserve their ruling on Ms Wilkinson’s case, in which Mr Livesley’s widow, Wendy, is also involved as an interested party.






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