A promising young executive from Glasgow, reduced to a shadow of her former self by a road accident which left her fiance brain damaged and paralysed, yesterday won more than #630,000 compensation in London's High Court.
Katrina Dahlstrom, 37, was reduced from a high-flying investment analyst to a ''somewhat forlorn figure'' plagued by thoughts of the successful career she might have had, said Deputy Judge Anthony Carlile QC.
She and her fiance, theatrical carpenter Billy Castile, were struck down by a car in February 1994 as they were walking over a zebra crossing in Horns Road, Barkingside, Essex. He will have to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and she suffered brain damage which robbed her of her intellectual edge to succeed.
Judge Carlile told the court: ''The relationship between them is at an end as a result of the changes in their lives following the accident. The accident destroyed their working and personal lives.''
Miss Dahlstrom lived a frantically busy life in London before the accident, but has now moved back to live an isolated existence with her elderly parents in a small tenement flat in Clarkston Road, Cathcart, Glasgow, without friends or job prospects and too scared to stray out in busy public places alone.
She told the court she is so terrified of crossing busy roads she sometimes even asks old ladies to help her across.
Formerly an investment analyst with the Civil Aviation Authority, Miss Dahlstrom had been hoping to do an MBA course at Westminster University at the time of the accident but now has difficulty coping with figures and any analytical work.
Miss Dahlstrom was in a coma for several days after the accident and was hospitalised for six months.
The judge said: ''Now Miss Dahlstrom is of reduced intelligence, on the evidence somewhere towards the bottom of the average range. She has lost her career and I am satisfied she has no prospect of picking it up. Any employment she will have in the future will be of a mundane and routine nature,'' the judge added.
Miss Dahlstrom had sued the driver of the car which struck her and Mr Castile - David Franklin, of Cranbrook Road, Barkingside - whose insurers admitted liability, but disputed the amount of compensation.
But the judge yesterday awarded her #634,637.67 damages, before interest, as well as legal costs.
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