An engineer who sued an insurance company for £5million after claiming a motorbike crash left him needing a mobility scooter has been accused of faking the extent of his injuries after he was reportedly caught on CCTV walking normally.
Grant Greening-Steer was left with a fractured spine and ‘moderate to severe traumatic brain injury’ after motorist Derek Ainge ploughed into his Yamaha motorbike near his home in New Milton, Hampshire, in June 2019.
Nearly seven years after the crash, Mr Greening-Steer is suing the driver’s insurers for around £5million in damages – including a £160,000 claim for someone to walk his dog – over multiple injuries.
He said the injuries have stopped him working, and left him sometimes needing a mobility scooter and struggling ‘with laces and buttons’.
However, lawyers for the driver and his insurers have secretly shot surveillance footage which shows Mr Greening-Steer walking normally.
They claim the video proves the 51-year-old is in fact a ‘malingerer’ and ‘deliberately lying’ about his symptoms to claim millions.
At the start of his High Court case, Charles Woodhouse – KC for motorist Mr Ainge and his insurers – accepted the severity of the motorcyclist’s accident, which caused extensive physical damage sustained on top of his spinal fracture, including an additional fracture to the lower back and injuries to his left shoulder and hip.
He told the court: ‘We acknowledge the seriousness of his injuries and that the claimant is likely to suffer some, even some relatively significant, ongoing symptoms as a result of those injuries.’
Grant Greening-Steer outside the High Court. He is suing an insurance company for £5million following a serious motorbike crash
Mr Greening-Steer was left with a fractured spine and ‘moderate to severe traumatic brain injury’ after a car ploughed into his motorbike in June 2019
But he added that secretly shot surveillance footage proves that Mr Greening-Steer has by now ‘made a reasonable functional recovery’ and is exaggerating his symptoms.
‘Liability is admitted, but the claimant has deliberately lied about and exaggerated the extent of his ongoing symptoms and their impact on him to deliberately inflate the value of his claim,’ said the barrister.
Mr Greening-Steer has submitted a damages bill totalling £4,924,418, although some of his needs have still to be quantified, the court heard.
The defence KC argued that his claim is worth a fraction of that at £112,022 – and should be struck out entirely due to his alleged lies.
Mr Woodhouse added that Mr Greening-Steer’s ‘dishonesty has been present from the start of and throughout his claim’.
‘It is submitted that the surveillance evidence unequivocally contradicts Mr Greening-Steer’s account of his disability and its impact on his day-to-day activities and ability to work,’ he told the court.
Mr Woodhouse said that neurosurgeons who examined the cooling engineer and assessed the surveillance video concluded that it established exaggeration of his symptoms.
One medic said: ‘Conscious exaggeration is clearly depicted. I am strongly of the view that he is malingering to enhance the value of his claim.’
Medical records shown to the court suggested that Mr Greening-Steer made a ‘reasonable recovery’ during the first year after his accident and secretly filmed footage seemingly contradicts his claims that his walking ability has been badly curtailed by his injuries
The barrister continued: ‘The claimant’s dishonesty pervades every part of the quantification of his claim, which is founded on the extent of disability that he suffers and his prognosis.’
Medical records shown to the court suggested that Mr Greening-Steer made a ‘reasonable recovery’ during the first year after his accident and was able to get back to part-time work, including driving a forklift truck, while still suffering ‘ongoing symptoms’.
But Mr Greening-Steer’s damages claim flatly contradicted this picture of gradual recovery, submitted Mr Woodhouse, adding: ‘On the contrary, he claims to suffer very significant disability’.
Overall, he complained about a range of restrictions and ongoing disabilities, the court heard, including problems standing up and ‘an altered gait with a dragging left leg, a plodding right leg and no arm swing’.
He claimed the need of a standard and off-road mobility scooter to help get around, as well as sometimes needing walking poles and a stick to help deal with his ‘limited walking range’.
In court documents, Mr Greening-Steer recounted problems getting in and out of the bath, difficulties carrying things without spilling them and a generalised ‘debilitating fatigue’.
At the time of the accident, he was running a refrigerated trailer business, but the effect of his injuries ultimately made work impossible, he claimed.
Despite struggling to return to work, he ‘found he could no longer cope with it,’ he claimed, maintaining that he is now unlikely to return to work.
His injuries also caused ‘reduced manual dexterity’ and he ‘struggles with buttons and laces’.
‘The principal challenges are physical disability, reduced balance, pain, fatigue, cognitive blunting, incontinence and emotional dysregulation,’ he explained.
The total sum sought includes individual heads of claim such as more than £1.8million for lifetime care and assistance, £116,176 for holidays and £160,655 to pay someone to walk his dog for an hour each day.
In court, he was quizzed about the basis for his £4.9million compensation claim and explained that he never uses a walking stick outside the house as he finds it ’embarrassing’.
He also said that he only resorts to a mobility scooter ‘when going out all day for long periods’.
‘If I sit down for a long period of time, my left foot goes stiff and if I stand for a long time my leg will spasm,’ he explained.
Mr Greening-Steer also told a medic who examined him in 2024 that ‘he couldn’t go out when it was windy for fear of being blown over’ – explaining that he is vulnerable to the wind as he lives near a cliff top.
He told another doctor he couldn’t walk more than 100 metres without experiencing exhaustion and a burning sensation in his leg.
‘And you maintain that’s a true and accurate description of the distance you can walk?’ asked the defence barrister.
‘I can walk a bit further now, maybe 150 metres. This was back then,’ he replied.
Mr Greening-Steer was also confronted with the surveillance evidence filmed by private investigators on multiple occasions, which defence lawyers claim contradict claims that his walking ability has been badly curtailed by his injuries.
The defence KC showed the court footage taken of Mr Greening-Steer driving to a petrol station and filling up, claiming that when progressing to and from the car he ‘walked with a normal gait and with a normal arm swing’.
‘I can’t walk with a normal gait, it’s physically impossible,’ said Mr Greening-Steer.
Soon afterwards, the engineer, who claimed difficulties with driving long distances, got back into his two-seater Aston Martin and headed off on the motorway, travelling for 55 miles before the pursuing investigators allegedly lost sight of him because he was doing 90mph.
‘I don’t think I was doing 90,’ he replied.
Mr Greening-Steer denies malingering, however if he is found to have been fundamentally dishonest in his claim, he could end up with nothing, despite the insurer’s acceptance that he suffered injuries.
It could also result in him being handed the insurer’s lawyers’ bills for defending his claim.
The trial continues.
