Woman, 46, left paralyzed after being ‘catapulted’ from her bed during sex loses bid for $1.3M damages – Judge rules Claire Busby’s ‘tragic accident’ was down to ‘unusual positioning and movement’
‘Claire was sex mad when we were together but I can’t believe she’s trying to blame the bed’ – Ex-husband
Mother, 46, left paralysed after being ‘catapulted’ from her bed during sex, lost $1.3M [£1M] damages suit against supplier after judge rules ‘tragic accident’ was down to ‘unusual positioning and movement’
Mother-of-four Claire Busby fell off her bed shifting positions during sex with her then lover in Aug 2013
The 46-year-old millionaire business owner suffered a serious injury to her spine that left her wheelchair-bound, sued the bed supplier
Her lawyers claimed divans were not fastened and two gliders were missing
Judge rejects her claim for compensation, saying it was ‘a simple accident’
Wheelchair-bound Claire Busby, [seen in October, 2017], has lost her lawsuit for compensation against the bed’s supplier after she was ‘catapulted’ from a bed during sex, causing paralysis
A British woman’s bid to sue a bed company for more than a million dollars in damages after she was paralyzed during a sexual encounter has been rejected by Britain’s High Court. She was seeking $1.3 million [£1 million] in damages from the bed company.
Claire Busby suffered severe spinal injuries when she fell off her bed in 2013. She accused bed seller “Beds Are Uzzzz” of selling her a bed with missing pieces, which she said caused her to fall.
Mother-of-four Claire Busby was in bed with her lover John Marshall at the time of the accident. He had split from Sue, his wife of almost 20 years, just days before.
Busby of Maidenhead, Berkshire, suffered a serious injury to her spine when she fell from the super king size double divan as she shifted her position during sex with lover John Marshall.
Busby claims she was “catapulted” from an alleged faulty super-king bed while performing a sex act on her married millionaire beau John Marshall [photo] in her Surrey home. The dismissed her compensation suit
The 46-year-old claimed the bed was in a ‘defective state’ at the time of her accident and brought legal action against the Bed Company which supplied it.
But, rejecting her case, the court found the bed was ‘not defective’. Busby’s fall was a ‘tragic accident’, Judge Barry Cotter said. He added that the accident ‘required a most unfortunate and unusual combination of positioning on the bed and movement which I do not believe would have been foreseeable by any reasonable person prior to the incident.’
Speaking after the case, Richard Manders, director of Berkshire Bed Company, said: ‘We are delighted the court has ruled in our favour. We are sorry that Ms Busby was injured and we wish her and her family well for the future.’
Claire Busby was engaged in a sex act in the bed with her lover John Marshall [left], at the time of the accident. He had broken up with Sue [right], his wife of almost 20 years, just days before the tragic ‘bed accident’
The bed was one of five delivered to Busby’s then home in August 2013 when she was renovating the property, the court had heard.
The injured woman who used to work in real estate, was injured a week after the bed’s delivery while having sex with her then partner John Marshall.
During her testimony, Busby told the court she was kneeling in the middle of the bed performing a sex act when she decided to move position and ‘swung her legs’ from underneath her, before laying back on the bed with her head towards the bottom end.
At that point, she claims, the bed gave way and she toppled off the end, landing on her head.
She said: ‘I spun around, I put my hand down and then I felt like I was catapulted off the back of the bed.
‘My head hit the floor, I fell to the side and then I heard like a spring in my body snap, it felt like.’
The complainant alleged that the two divans which made up the base of the bed were not properly fastened together and two ‘gliders’ – or feet – were missing from the end of the bed, creating a height difference between one end and the other.
Her barrister Winston Hunter QC said she expected the mattress to support her weight as she lay back on the bed, but that it failed to and she continued moving ‘backwards and downwards’.
A Beds R Uzzz divan was one of five delivered to Busby’s home, just weeks before the accident. The judge found the bed was ‘not defective’
Marshall told London’s High Court that at first he thought the accident was funny, but he realised the seriousness of what happened when his lover couldn’t get up from the bedroom floor at her Surrey home.
Marshall had been married to wife Sue, 48, for almost two decades and they had been officially split for a matter of days when he began a relationship with Busby after meeting her in Spain. Insisting that he and Busby were not in a sexual relationship before he separated from Sue, he told the court that the relationship ‘took off’ after they went to the Chelsea Flower Show together, an event which ran between May 21 and May 25 in 2013.
‘When that incident happened we were separated, I was not with Susan at the time and I want to make that very clear. Susan and I separated in May and the incident happened in August,’ Marshall testified.
A friend said Marshall moved down to Surrey to look after Busby after the incident, leaving his wife Sue ‘very upset’. However, he has since married another woman, his third wife, with whom he now lives.
Still bitter: Neil Bulmer, [photo], who was married to Claire Busby for three years, called her ‘obsessed with money’ and questioned her compensation claim.
Speaking after the case was reported, Busby’s former husband Neil Bulmer, 51, called her ‘obsessed with money’ and questioned her compensation claim.
He said: ‘Claire was sex mad when we were together but I can’t believe she’s trying to blame the bed.’
Lawyers for the bed company argued it was properly assembled at the time of delivery and that, even if the two gliders were missing by the time of the accident, that would not have caused the bed to lose balance in the way suggested by Busby.
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