Road Accident Fund ducking and diving stuntwoman claim

NEARLY nine years after UK stuntwoman Olivia Jackson was badly injured while filming a movie in South Africa, she is struggling to receive compensation from the Road Accident Fund (RAF).

Jackson suffered devastating injuries which led to the amputation of her arm, during the filming of the world-renowned sci-fi action film Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, shot outside Pretoria in 2015.

She instituted a claim for more than R40 million in damages against various stakeholders in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, which included a claim against the fund.

In 2019, the RAF disputed that the claim fell under its ambit as the injuries were sustained during a stunt scene in the film, but the court ruled it did fall under the RAF Act.

A year later, the issue regarding liability was before the court. This time, the court ruled the fund 100% liable for the damages Jackson could prove she had suffered.

In September 2020, the fund applied for leave to appeal against both judgments. It later withdrew its application.

In March 2021, the parties met for a pretrial conference to pave the way for the next court hearing to determine the amount payable to Jackson. In 2023, before the trial was to take place, the court ruled the RAF had to make an interim payment to Jackson (the amount is not known).

No payment was forthcoming and a sale in execution of some of the fund’s assets was scheduled for May, to pay the interim damages awarded to her. In a desperate bid not to pay, the RAF has turned to the court to have the leave to appeal applications against the 2019 and 2020 judgments reinstated.

Judge Norman Davis had harsh words for the fund because only now that it was in a tight corner to pay the interim payment, it wanted to reinstate the leave to appeal. He turned down the application.

Jackson was known across the world as a stunt double for top actresses such as Charlize Theron. She suffered head and face injuries, a punctured lung and an amputated finger when things went wrong during an action scene, shot along the N4 extension near Pelindaba.

Jackson was driving at high speed on a racing motorbike while a camera fitted on to a mechanical crane was filming her. That was, in turn, fitted to a vehicle, which drove towards her while filming her from the front.

The sequence was that the camera would start filming close to the road surface and then be lifted to allow her to pass safely underneath. But the camera was lifted too late and knocked Jackson off the motorbike. She spent 17 days in a coma.