Orkney dive boat firm appeals boy's compensation award

Lex Warner died during a diving expedition off the north Highlands coast

An Orkney dive boat company has appealed against a decision to award compensation to the son of a diver who died off Cape Wrath in 2012.

Lex Warner, from Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, was injured in a fall on the boat before making the dive.

Stromness-based Scapa Flow Charters was sued by Lex's nine-year-old son Vincent in a legal action raised on his behalf by his mother Debbie.

In September, judge Lord Sandison awarded the family £290,000.

Mrs Warner won a case at the UK Supreme Court in 2018 to be allowed to raise the civil court action on her son's behalf.

Scapa Flow Charters' lawyers have launched an appeal at the Inner House of the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

They claim Lord Sandison did not apply "correct" legal tests in his deliberations during the case heard at the Court of Session last year.

Lawyers acting for the Warner family said their clients wanted the appeal heard as soon as was possible.

The appeal has been arranged to take place on 25 March.

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Mr Warner, 50, and a group of friends had been making a "deep water" technical dive of a wreck off Cape Wrath in the Highlands.

He was on board the MV Jean Elaine vessel, operated by Scapa Flow Charters, in the hours before his death.

The case - which had seen Mrs Warner and her son sue for £500,000 - centred on an incident on the boat.

Mr Warner suffered an abdominal injury in a fall while wearing heavy diving equipment and fins.

The diver later got into trouble when in the water.

Lex Warner and Vincent, who is now nine

At the Court of Session last year, lawyers for the family claimed the ship's skipper, Andy Cuthbertson, did not do enough to minimise the risks which came from divers walking on board boats while wearing fins.

Scapa Flow Charters' lawyers claimed Mr Warner had a duty to walk across the deck carefully because he had fins on and was carrying heavy equipment.

In their appeal, lawyers have argued that Mr Warner walking while wearing fins was "objectively reasonable" and the skipper had no reasonable basis for attempting to stop him.