Rally champion loses £2m claim for crash

A judge rejected Raymond Munro's claim that William Sturrock had been negligent by providing notes with the wrong information about the bend where he lost control.

Mr Munro, 48, said he relied on the notes and took the bend at about 70mph in fifth gear, and would not have crashed had he been going slower.

Mr Sturrock stood by his "subjective" assessment of the corner in Clashindarroch Forest, Speyside, and insisted that poor driving caused the accident.

Lord Uist ruled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that Mr Sturrock had given an inaccurate description of the bend for an earlier rally on the same course, but there was no error in the notes for the event in 2004 when Mr Munro crashed.

Mr Munro, of Smithton, Inverness, suffered no physical injury, but was said to have been badly affected mentally, to the extent that he changed from a confident, successful driver and businessman in vehicle hire and property development to someone who could not motivate himself.

The court heard he had already won the Scottish Rally Championship of 2004 before the Speyside stages, which was one leg of the competition.

Drivers relied on route notes, which were read out to them by co-drivers. Mr Sturrock, trading as Scotmaps, of Brechin, Angus, has provided notes for the Scottish championship for 12 years.

Mr Munro paid 100 for notes and a DVD "drive through" of the Speyside stages. The bend of his crash was given as "4Lin", meaning it had a 40-degree angle, was to the left and could be taken on a tight line. In notes for the 2001 rally, it had been classified as 7L, meaning a 70-degree angle.

He said he would have gone into the bend in his 180,000 Subaru Impreza two or maybe three gears lower and 30-40mph slower if the corner had been given to him as 7Lin, but his approach had been appropriate in terms of the notes.

"The car flipped and rolled over and ended up on its driver's side. It is now apparently known as Munro's Corner," said Mr Munro.

Mr Sturrock said the notes were not intended to be scientifically accurate. They provided his subjective assessment of the course, and tried to describe to the driver what the road was doing, not what speed the driver should be doing. He accepted that, previously, something had made him perceive that corner as a "seven", but he saw it differently in 2004 and it was a "four".

Lord Uist said: "The critical issue in this case is the angle of the bend, which must be a question of fact capable of empirical verification.Expert evidence of the angle was given by a surveyor, Jonathan Thompson, who measured it at 30 degrees in a topographical survey."

He added: "The description of the angle of the bend in the route notes did not require to be mathematically accurate and to describe a 30-degree bend as a 'four' was within the range of acceptability. I am satisfied there was no error by Mr Sturrock in his description of the bend as 4Lin in the 2004 route notes."