Architect sues for £1.4m after losing top of finger on yachting holiday

Sara Turnbull said she had to give up her architecture job after an accident involving a ‘flimsy’ catch on a fridge door

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An architect has sued for £1.4 million after losing the top of her finger in a fridge door while on holiday.
Sara Turnbull said she had to give up her architecture job because she could no longer sketch after the accident, which happened during a yachting holiday in Greece.
At the time, she had been a partner at an architect firm but said she had to resign and hire staff to help her in other consultancy work because of her reduced ability to type.
She is now suing Neilson Active Holidays, the company from which she chartered the 32-foot six-person yacht, blaming a “flimsy” catch on the fridge door for the accident.
However, the holiday company has denied liability, instead claiming the fridge was safe and that Ms Turnbull dropped the door “accidentally” onto herself.
The accident occurred after Ms Turnbull chartered one of Neilson Active’s Greece-based fleet of Dufour 325 yachts on a week-long tour of the Ionian Islands in May 2018.
Ms Turnbull, a chartered environmentalist who is also on the board of Transport for London, said she went to grab a bottle of water from the heavy-lidded top-opening fridge when “suddenly and without warning the fridge door slammed shut”, chopping off her fingertip.
“I held the hinged lid open with my left hand… the hinge clip popped open and my left hand couldn’t hold the weight of the door,” she told Judge Simon Brown.
“The door slammed down.”
She said a latch, which should have held the fridge door in place while open, had “failed”, causing the door to suddenly drop down onto her hand.
The court heard Ms Turnbull’s career had been significantly affected by the accident, with her having to quit as a partner at an architecture firm “due to her inability to sketch and use a computer”.
She also had to employ an administrative assistant and a managing director for Wild Work, her social enterprise consultancy, due to her reduced ability to type, she said.
Ms Turnbull claimed that her injury was caused because the fridge lid could slam shut, rather than have a damped closure mechanism, which slows the closure of doors and cupboards.
In the witness box, she told the judge that she was not claiming the latch on the fridge lid was broken, but that it was “flimsy” and prone to “intermittent failure”.
Linda Nelson, the barrister representing Neilson Active Holidays, argued that the accident was not caused by any fault on its part – but by Ms Turnbull’s own actions.
“There is no good basis for finding that the latch was not in good working order,” she told the judge during the trial last week.
She said that Ms Turnbull had used the fridge “without incident for a week” and had seen the trap hazard warning sign on the lid.
“Our case is that the claimant dropped it accidentally on herself,” the barrister said.
The court heard that the yacht manager checked the fridge after the accident and found it was working in good order.
Ms Nelson said the fridge had been built by the yacht manufacturer as standard and that the galley space had been certified as compliant with safety regulations.
She argued that while newer or more expensive yachts may have the damped closing mechanism, that does not mean that the “fittings on older models are inappropriate”.
“She knew full well what the risks were and something went wrong. There’s very little that the defendant should have done to keep her safe,” Ms Nelson added.
The architect’s claimed losses include over £1 million in lost future earnings.
However, the judge must first decide whether the company was at fault before deciding how much in compensation should be paid.
He reserved his judgment in the case, which will be given at a later date.