May a highway authority be legally liable for an accident?

Useful discussion of the current situation, by District Judge Julie Exton, appears in the 12 September issue of the Law Society Gazette. Running through the requirements of the Highways Act and various court decisions, she concludes: ‘Always ask an authority what steps it has taken to fulfil its obligations under section 39. However, given the present state of the law, unless it has acted wholly unreasonably or there are exceptional circumstances, your enquiries may prove to be a road that leads nowhere’.