RODRIGUES DE ANDRADE AND ANOTHER V SALVADOR AND OTHERS

Case C-514/16, Court of Justice of the European Union, 28 November 2017

Insurance (motor) - Tractor used to power herbicide sprayer - Whether tractor in "use" as a vehicle - Consolidated Motor Insurance Directive, European Parliament and Council Directive 2009/103/EC

RDA owned a farm in Portugal. MA was employed on the farm. On 18 March 2006 MA was spraying crops with herbicide from a container mounted on a tractor. The tractor was stationary but the engine was turned on to power the spray. A combination of the weight of the tractor, the vibrations of the engine, the movement of the herbicide hose and the wet condition of the land caused a landslip: the tractor fell and killed MA. The preliminary question for the CJEU was whether RDA was using a motor vehicle at the time of the incident. The CJEU's preliminary ruling was that, where a vehicle could be used as a means of transport and as a machine for carrying out work, it was "necessary to determine whether, at the time of the accident involving such a vehicle, that vehicle was being used principally as a means of transport, in which case that use can be covered by the concept of 'use of vehicles' ... or as a machine for carrying out work, in which case the use in question cannot be covered by that concept".