AN accident victim who has become a virtual recluse following a horrific childhood incident which left him scarred for life, settled a #1.5m damages action yesterday.

Robert McMillan suffered severe facial injuries at the age of 12 when his face was sliced open after he rode into a wire fence on his motor scooter.

Evidence in Mr McMillan's case against East Lothian Council was due to be heard by Lord Abernethy at the Court of Session when the agreement was announced.

The terms were not disclosed but Mr McMillan, 24, is understood to have received a substantial sum.

He suffered severe facial injuries in August 1986 when he went with his family to Musselburgh Racecourse to attend the Musselburgh Trot. The racecourse was owned and operated by the local council.

Mr McMillan, who lives in Fife, had taken his 50cc Honda scooter to the meeting and his parents had allowed him to take it to the children's play area. He was riding it towards the play area when he suffered his accident.

The area was separated from the racecourse by a series of wooden posts and, unknown to Mr McMillan, a strip of metal wire, a quarter inch in diameter, ran across the top of the posts.

As Mr McMillan went to ride between two of the wooden posts he ran into the wire which sliced through his right cheek down to his lower lip and fractured his jaw. He was taken by ambulance to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh where his wound was stitched and his teeth wired together.

Since the accident he has had to undergo facial reconstruction and extensive dental treatment.

Before the accident Mr McMillan was said to be an outgoing child who enjoyed hobbies like football and weightlifting.

Since then he has undergone a complete change of personality, leading to social withdrawal, depression, total loss of interest in his surroundings and acute self-consciousness about the two-and-a-half by three-and-a-half inch scar under his mouth.

He has suffered poor sleep, irritability and nightmares and is said to have developed an obsessive behaviour disorder which results in his spending a great deal of time checking to see if windows and doors are secure.

In his claim, Mr McMillan says that his complete change of personality led to him refusing to attend school, failing to achieve any qualifications and becoming a recluse within his house. His mother has to take meals to him in his room.

Because of what is alleged to be his ''extreme social withdrawal and obsessive trait'' he says his family cannot leave him alone and that one of his parents or his sisters has to be with him all the time.

He claims that it is unlikely that he will ever be able to live any kind of independent existence and that because of his physical problems and later because of his psychological problems he never went back to school after the accident.

Mr McMillan says that his psychological condition is so severe that he is unlikely ever to be fit to go back to work.

In his case at the Court of Session, he alleged that the council had a duty to take reasonable care for the safety of children at the racecourse and that they should have realised that the wire strip was not obvious to members of the public. The council should have hung ribbons on bright colours, or plastic tags from the wire.

East Lothian Council denied liability, but admitted that after the accident it placed plastic strips at intervals along the length of wire to warn people that it was there.

The council also claimed that Mr McMillan's school attendance record was extremely poor even before his accident.