Widow fails in Iraq death claim

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A widow whose security consultant husband died during an ambush in Iraq has been defeated in her £300,000 High Court compensation bid over his death.

Mr Justice Burnett, sitting in London, ruled that Julian Davies's life would not have been saved even if he had been wearing body armour.

His widow Joanne, from the Vale of Glamorgan, had argued his employers had failed to heed safety concerns.

The judge said Global Strategies Group had not failed in its duty of care.

Mr Davies, 39, was fatally wounded when he travelled on a three-vehicle convoy in Mosul, northern Iraq in 2004.

He died after being airlifted to hospital from a US Army base.

His employers Global Strategies Group had denied all liability for his death.

Armoured car

The High Court was told that Global Strategies was contracted to the US Government as part of "Operation Northstar" to protect human and material assets in northern Iraq.

On the day he was killed, Mr Davies's armed convoy was forced to change routes after a car bomb exploded and the vehicle, which had three doors removed to allow quick responses by heavily armed passengers, later came under attack from rebel forces, the court was told.

Nicholas Braslavsky QC for Mrs Davies had argued that her husband should have been supplied with an armoured car or, at the very least, a vehicle with bullet proof glass, and if he had been, the bullet which killed him would not have done so.

He also claimed Global Strategies Group had failed to heed the concerns of senior staff about the safety of employees in Iraq, and did not have a proper contingency plan for emergency situations such as the one Mr Davies found himself in.

But Mr Justice Burnett said it would not have been "reasonably practicable" to fit a bullet-resistant windscreen to the soft-skinned Toyota Landcruiser in which he died.

He also said the security situation in the area had not deteriorated so badly as to make armoured vehicles mandatory.

That would have involved a "wholesale change of tactics" by Global Strategies, who would effectively have had to withdraw from their contract.

Even had Mr Davies been wearing an armoured collar, there was no evidence it would have stopped the AK47 round and the judge concluded that it "could have made no difference".

He concluded: "It follows that Mrs Davies has not established any causative breach of duty".

'Military man'

Giving evidence during the case, Mrs Davies, a former soldier herself who lives in Barry with the couple's 11-year-old son Matthew, said that she and her husband had discussed having a second baby in the weeks before he was killed.

She said that her husband, who was earning US$500 a day, was a "military man" to the core and would have worked in such a capacity "as long as his body would allow him".

She admitted being anxious about him working in Iraq, but told the court that asking him to give up the military life would have been a "futile discussion".

Mrs Davies was not in court to hear the judge's decision.