An HR consultant who fractured her wrist tripping over a rope outside one of London’s best-known gastropubs is suing its owners for £4.2m.

Carmen Mazo, 43, suffered the injury after she stumbled over the boundary of the beer garden at Notting Hill’s The Westbourne, which is run by artist Sebastian Boyle.



She says she would have expected to be earning £700 a day by now if it were not for the 2009 accident. She claims it destroyed her lucrative career and left her with unsightly scars and post-traumatic arthritis. It had also had a devastating impact on her mental health and social life, she claims.

In 2013, Mazo was awarded £156,871 at Central London county court after she sued the pub’s operators and they admitted liability for the accident. But she has been given permission to appeal against the level of the award, which she believes is a fraction of what she deserves.



People drinking outside The Westbourne pub. Photograph: Alamy

Mazo said:“The fact that I have been left with major scarring on my wrist, which to an unsympathetic observer might look like I am prone to self-harm, is very distressing for me … My career has always been my refuge to block away unpleasant circumstances in my personal life, but now I am finding that because of a bartender’s irresponsibility I could end up with no career or purpose in life.”

Mazo was off work for months after the accident. She returned only to give up completely three years later. She says she would now have to go back to the “bottom of the ladder” and retrain in another career.

“My mood changes are like a rollercoaster, changing from anger to sadness in seconds,” she said. “I am easily irritated and I lose my temper very easily, then end up breaking into tears when I realise that I was never like that before. The accident has totally destroyed my work and social life, changing me such that I do not think that I will ever be my old self again.”

At the county court hearing, judge Heather Baucher rejected her claim to more than £4.2m, finding Mazo’s injury was not bad enough to justify her giving up her work.

However, Lord Justice Laws has granted her permission to take the loss-of-career point to the appeal court, saying it was arguable that Baucher was wrong.

“It seems to me that she is entitled to have the matter examined in this court,” he said.



No date was set for the hearing.