The UK law regarding negligence arises out of the common law whereby a party with a proximate relationship with another owes a duty to take reasonable care to avoid forseeable harm to the other party. In this case the Defendant accepted that it owed a duty to the Claimant to provide her with appropriate instruction and supervision in her use of the premises, including the bouldering wall, and that included making it clear to her that she should not descend from the bouldering wall by jumping or dropping of it. The statutory duty under the Occupier's Liability Act 1957 did not apply because the accident was not caused due to the state of the premises. The common law defence of "volenti non fit injuria" ("to a willing person it is not a wrong") was pleaded but found to be of very limited applicability because the "volenti" defence requires a Claimant to have consented to a tortious act on behalf of the Defendant, and the Claimant had not done so. The Claimant was however found to have contributed to the accident by her own actions by 33%, with the effect that the award of damages was reduced by this amount. The provisions of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 prevented the Defendant from relying upon any written disclaimers in a form that the Claimant signed stating that she was aware of the risks inherent in climbing and acknowledging that she should climb down and not jump from the wall.

On 26 March 2008 the Claimant visited an indoor climbing centre owned and operated by the Defendant company in Guildford, Surrey, UK. The Claimant attended the centre as part of a group team-building exercise with six other member of staff from the bank at which she worked. None of the group, including the Claimant, had any prior experience of rock climbing either inddoors or outside.

The group was supervised by instructors that were employed by the Defendant and spent the majority of the session using roped climbs. At the start of the session, the Claimant signed a form declaring that she was aware of, and accepted the risks inherent in, climbing and mountaineering activities and secondly that she acknowledged the specific recommendation that descent from the bouldering wall should be made by climbing down not jumping, although her attention was not specifically drawn to that part of the document.

Towards the end of the session the Claimant was told by an instructor that she could use the bouldering wall. The wall was 4-4.5m high and had safety matting that was 400mm thick. it was accepted between the parties that no demonstration or practical guidance was given by the instructors on how to climb down from the bouldering wall and the court found as a fact that no instruction was given to the effect that a climber should climb down to the mats rather than jump.

The Claimant climbed the bouldering wall and jumped off, twisting as she fell. Upon landing on the safety matting she badly injured her ankle.

The primary issue of fact between the parties was whether the Claimant had in fact been verbally instructed not to jump from the wall rather than climb down. The instructors contended that such a warning had been given but the Claimant's case was they had not done so. A secondary issue was that the Defendant contended that the Claimant had actually made an admission to the effect that she knew that she had been instructed to climb down and that she should not have jumped down, whereas the Claimant stated that she had not.

The Defendant relied upon the case of Trustees of the Portsmouth Youth Activities Committee (A Charity) v Poppleton [2009] PIQR P1 ("Poppleton") and submitted that no amount of matting would remove the risk of injury.

The Claimant argued that Poppleton was fact-specific and contained no novel points of law. It further argued that "[i]t matters not how obvious a danger may be, it should be pointed out.” The Claimant further argued that the Defendant had assumed the responsibility both of instruction and supervision.

As a secondary point, the Defendant relied upon a "volenti" defence. The Claimant contended that she had not consented to any risk arising from a lack of proper instruction.

The court found as a fact that the Defendants' instructors had not instructed the Claimant to down climb rather than jump and that no clear prohibition on jumping was given.

The court further found that the defendant had assumed responsibility for the Claimant by providing instructors and that, “the defendant had known that the claimant had, to that point, only climbed upwards that day and had therefore known, or ought to have known that she was at a disadvantage on the low wall. By not instructing her not to jump down from the wall, the defendant had failed to discharge its duty of care to the claimant.”

The court found that liability should be split between the parties, but that the Defendant had the greater share of responsibility. Firstly, this was because the Defendant was in breach of its own procedures and standards in failing to brief or warn her properly about jumping onto the crash mat. Secondly, it was because the instructors were aware that previous participants had sustained injury jumping down onto the mat. Thirdly, becuase the instructors either failed to observe or they ignored the Claimant and the other witnesses actually jumping onto the mat before the accident, and, fourthly, they failed to go through any drill with the Claimant as to the appropriate way to climb down.

The Claimant was found to be one third (33%) responsible because she could have attempted to climb down, or she could have asked for help, instead, she chose to jump from a height of over five feet. She also chose to twist or turn as she did so.

This is a first instance decision that turns upon its own facts. It does not establish any new law. A key feature of the decision is that the Defendant had assumed the responsibility both of instruction and supervision. A different decision may have been made had the Claimant not been directly instructed.

The decision has been criticised but was not appealed. There is arguable inconsistency in the implicit finding that a warning not to jump was required and the finding that the Claimant was partly responsible for the accident by choosing to jump, however it does not appear to have been argued by the Defendant that no warning or instruction was needed.

Since the judgement it is now common for climbing walls in the UK to explicitly state upon a user first using a climbing wall that users must climb down rather than jump. This is often done via a disclaimer form that requires the user to read and tick a box stating that they understand this advice. Posters are often also displayed around climbing walls stating the same and the British Mountaineering Council has produced a commercially available poster.