Hazel Boyd sued her trainer boss Debbie Hughes for thousands of pounds after being thrown from a horse, but private investigators collected overwhelming evidence against her
A woman who sued her boss for £436,000 after hurting her arm falling off a horse has been busted for exaggerating the extent of her injuries.
Hazel Boyd, from Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, was exposed after private investigators secretly recorded her playing sports. She was given nothing in her High Court case against her former boss, the racehorse trainer Debbie Hughes.
Ms Boyd sought damages after she dropped off a three-year-old thoroughbred named Foxy in June 2020. She worked as a stable hand for Ms Hughes at Ty’r Heol Farm in Tonyrefail. She claimed the horse became “spooked” and threw her to the ground, which led her to break and dislocate her right elbow.
The former stable hand branded the animal as “dangerous” and said it had a tendency to “take fright”. She claimed her injuries stopped her from carrying out tasks such as gardening. She also said she couldn’t lead a dog with her right hand, before she was filmed carrying out the action.
Ms Boyd said the fall had ruined her riding career and claimed £368,000 in lost earnings on top of other damages, although she had since set up a “doggy daycare” business. She was accused of “fundamental dishonesty” after surveillance operatives filmed her playing sports and walking muscular dogs with her “bad” arm. Ms Hughes branded her former stable hand a “rugby-playing, football-playing goalkeeper, who is quite able”.
Ms Boyd, a former scrum half for Llantwit Fadre Pink Rhinos women’s rugby team, initially told the court she could no longer play rugby. After learning she had been filmed in rugby training, she claimed she had never meant to say she had not picked up a rugby ball since the accident. “I was not trying to be clever or hide anything,” she said. “I did do some training which included some touch-rugby — strictly no tackling, rucks and mauls — but have not played normal rugby.”
Ms Hughes’ barrister Georgina Crawford said videos showed Ms Boyd on various days walking dogs and going to football and rugby training. The lawyer pointed to one piece of footage which showed Ms Boyd walking three dogs including a “big, strong” husky that tugged at the lead in her right hand. Ms Boyd replied that the husky had not been pulling enough to put strain on her arm.
The judge, Mr Justice Cotter, accepted the injury was “very nasty” but he found Ms Boyd exaggerated her claims. She alleged that she could no longer brush her teeth right-handed, comb her hair, or do “any significant cooking”, reports Wales Online.
Judge Cotter came to the conclusion Ms Boyd exaggerated her level of disability because she was anxious for it not to be “underestimated”. He took into account that she had lost her job, was “to a degree reliant on painkillers”, had to reduce her socialising and watch her income carefully because she was on universal credit, and “faced an uncertain future”.
If the judge had found Ms Boyd was “fundamentally dishonest”, she could have been ordered to cover her former boss’ legal costs. But he stopped short of this and concluded that although there was “dishonest exaggeration”, this did not amount to fundamental dishonesty. Judge Cotter said it was true that Ms Boyd could no longer work in her long vocation as a stable hand and had never returned to contact rugby.
He added: “She voluntarily declared that she tried to retrain as an HGV driver and also returned to playing football and was setting up a dog walking business before she was aware of the surveillance, so has been fully open about running a business that necessarily involves walking dogs and sometimes keeping them on leads.”
Judge Cotter said Ms Boyd “should consider herself fortunate that her conscious exaggeration has not had devastating consequences”. He also ruled against her on liability. The court had heard arguments from Ms Crawford that the horse was not more likely to “spook” than an ordinary three-year-old racehorse. The judge found Ms Boyd had failed to show the horse was “known to shy or jink more easily than other horses”.
