The Court found both drivers negligent in a multi-vehicle collision, apportioning liability one-third to the defendant (McNamara) for unsafely initiating a lane change and two-thirds to the plaintiff (Tisseverasinghe) for unnecessarily swerving back into the defendant's lane when he had clear road ahead in lane 3, causing the actual collision. The Court heavily relied on dashcam footage (particularly when zoomed in) over the oral testimony of both parties, noting the unreliability of detailed accounts given nearly five years after the event, and found the plaintiff to be a very poor and disingenuous witness. The Court applied Arsalan v Rixon [2021] HCA 40 to allow 30 days of prestige hire car costs as a reasonable head of damage.
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