Lawyers to 'sue' injured four-year-old's dead mum

Lawyers representing a four-year-old whose mother was killed in a car crash are now attempting to sue the dead mother's insurers, claiming the mum was 'negligent' crashing the car and causing life-changing injuries to her baby daughter.

Cora-Lynn Kelley-Mattock, from Aberporth, Cardigan, was just two when her 19 year-old mum, Josephine, accidentally crashed the family VW Polo into a wall while she was a passenger.

Josephine died from brain injuries three days after the accident and Cora-Lynn, who was a back-seat passenger, was terribly injured. It happened on Boxing Day in 2013 on the A484 in Llandygwydd, Ceredigion.

She has been left with life-changing disabilities, her barrister James Bell says in a writ issued at London's High Court. And the now four-year-old's legal team want her late mother's motor insurers to pay her damages.

They claim that her mum was negligent in crashing the car and may also have failed to strap her into her baby seat properly.

The little girl "was found hanging" from her baby seat "folded at the waist and suspended by the waist belt of the seat...Her upper body was not restrained by the shoulder straps," the writ alleges.

The writ claims that her mother "failed to heed slow warnings" and "drove too fast" in damp conditions.

She also "failed to ensure that at all times her daughter was properly restrained and safely secured in her car seat," the document adds.

"The deceased thereby exposed her daughter to an unnecessary and foreseeable risk of injury," it goes on.

Coroner Peter Brunton issued a verdict of death by misadventure in the case of Miss Kelley at Aberystwyth County Court, in June 2014.

The coroner said she might have been distracted by her daughter or been trying to avoid another vehicle when she crashed.

In their defence to the action, Glyn Edwards, for the late Josephine Kelley's estate and motor insurers, says that the basic facts of the crash are not disputed. However he goes on to say that negligence on the part of Miss Kelley, either in causing the crash or in not strapping in her daughter properly, is not admitted.

He says that Cora-Lynn's lawyers are "required to prove that her mother's negligence was the likely cause of the accident as alleged."