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An engineer seeking £5m in compensation for injuries sustained in a motorbike crash – including a £160,000 claim for a dog walker – has been accused of faking his symptoms.

Grant Greening-Steer, 51, claims he now requires a mobility scooter and struggles with everyday tasks like tying shoelaces following the 2019 incident.

Mr Greening-Steer fractured his spine and suffered a “moderate to severe traumatic brain injury” when a car pulled out in front of his Yamaha motorbike near his New Milton, Hampshire, home in June 2019.

He claims that these injuries have left him unable to work and impacted his ability to manage daily tasks, like doing up buttons and laces.

However, lawyers representing the other driver and his insurers claim that secretly recorded surveillance footage proves Mr Greening-Steer is a “malingerer” who is “deliberately lying” about his condition to secure millions.

During the High Court proceedings, Charles Woodhouse KC, representing motorist Derek Ainge and his insurers, acknowledged the severity of the initial accident, which caused extensive physical damage, including a spinal fracture, a lower back fracture, and injuries to his left shoulder and hip.

“We acknowledge the seriousness of his injuries and that the claimant is likely to suffer some, even some relatively significant, ongoing symptoms as a result of those injuries,” Mr Woodhouse said.

However, he maintained that the surveillance evidence demonstrates Mr Greening-Steer has since “made a reasonable functional recovery” and is exaggerating his symptoms.

“Liability is admitted, but the claimant has deliberately lied about and exaggerated the extent of his ongoing symptoms and their impact on him to deliberately inflate the value of his claim,” said the barrister.

Mr Greening-Steer has submitted a damages bill totalling £4,924,418, although some of his needs have still to be quantified, the court heard.

The defence KC argued that his claim is worth a fraction of that at £112,022 – and should be struck out entirely due to his alleged lies.

“His dishonesty has been present from the start of and throughout his claim,” said Mr Woodhouse, revealing that investigators working for the motorist’s insurers have accumulated secretly shot video footage which allegedly shows the reality of Mr Greening-Steer’s disability.

“It is submitted that the surveillance evidence unequivocally contradicts Mr Greening-Steer’s account of his disability and its impact on his day-to-day activities and ability to work,” he added.

Neurosurgeons who examined the cooling engineer and assessed the surveillance video had concluded that it established exaggeration of his symptoms, said Mr Woodhouse, citing one medic who stated that “conscious exaggeration is clearly depicted … I am strongly of the view that he is malingering to enhance the value of his claim”.

The barrister added: “The claimant’s dishonesty pervades every part of the quantification of his claim, which is founded on the extent of disability that he suffers and his prognosis.”

The KC highlighted medical records suggesting he made a “reasonable recovery” during the first year after his crash, and was able to get back to part-time work, including driving a forklift truck, while still suffering “ongoing symptoms”.

open image in gallery Grant Greening-Steer says the accident has impacted his ability to manage daily tasks, like doing up buttons and laces ( Supplied by Champion News )

But Mr Greening-Steer’s damages claim flatly contradicted this picture of gradual recovery, submitted Mr Woodhouse, adding, “on the contrary, he claims to suffer very significant disability”.

Overall, he complained about a range of restrictions and ongoing disabilities, the court heard, including problems standing up and “an altered gait with a dragging left leg, a plodding right leg and no arm swing”.

He claimed the need for a standard and off-road mobility scooter to help get around, as well as sometimes needing walking poles and a stick to help deal with his “limited walking range”.

In court documents, Mr Greening-Steer recounted problems getting in and out of the bath, difficulties carrying things without spilling them and a generalised “debilitating fatigue”.

At the time of the crash, he was running a refrigerated trailer business, but the effect of his injuries ultimately made work impossible, he claimed.

Despite struggling to return to work, he “found he could no longer cope with it,” he claimed, maintaining that he is now unlikely to return to work.

His injuries also caused “reduced manual dexterity” and he “struggles with buttons and laces”.

“The principal challenges are physical disability, reduced balance, pain, fatigue, cognitive blunting, incontinence and emotional dysregulation,” he explained.

The total sum sought includes individual heads of claim, such as more than £1.8m for lifetime care and assistance, £116,176 for holidays and £160,655 to pay someone to walk his dog for an hour each day.

In court, he was quizzed about the basis for his £4.9m compensation claim and explained that he never uses a walking stick outside the house as he finds it “embarrassing”, and that he only resorts to a mobility scooter “when going out all day for long periods”.

“If I sit down for a long period of time, my left foot goes stiff and if I stand for a long time, my leg will spasm,” he explained.

He accepted telling a medic who examined him in 2024 that “he couldn’t go out when it was windy for fear of being blown over”, explaining that he is vulnerable to the wind as he lives near a cliff top.

He also accepted telling the doctor he couldn’t walk more than 100 metres without experiencing exhaustion and a burning sensation in his leg.

“And you maintain that’s a true and accurate description of the distance you can walk?” asked the defence barrister.

“I can walk a bit further now, maybe 150 metres. This was back then,” he replied.

Mr Greening-Steer was also confronted with the surveillance evidence filmed by private investigators on multiple occasions, which defence lawyers claim contradict claims that his walking ability has been badly curtailed by his injuries.

The defence KC showed the court footage taken of Mr Greening-Steeer driving to a petrol station and filling up, claiming that when progressing to and from the car, he “walked with a normal gait and with a normal arm swing”.

“I can’t walk with a normal gait, it’s physically impossible,” said Mr Greening-Steer.

Soon afterwards, the engineer, who claimed difficulties with driving long distances, got back into his two-seater Aston Martin and headed off on the motorway, travelling for 55 miles before the pursuing investigators allegedly lost sight of him because he was doing 90mph.

“I don’t think I was doing 90,” he replied.

Mr Greening-Steer denies malingering, but if it is found to have been fundamentally dishonest in his claim, he could end up with nothing, despite the insurer’s acceptance that he suffered injuries.

It could also result in him being handed the insurer’s lawyers’ bills for defending his claim.

The trial continues.