Ex-Marine suing MoD says soldiers cheated on hearing tests to be deployed
A former Royal Marine suing the Ministry of Defence over hearing loss suffered during his service has said that he and other members of his unit cheated military hearing tests so they could be deployed.
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Christopher Lambie is one of around 10,000 former personnel suing the MoD for compensation over noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL).
His is one of four “test cases” being tried at the High Court, the result of which will impact how much compensation others could receive.
Mr Lambie, 45, is claiming more than £400,000 in damages, including around £307,000 in future earnings that will allegedly be lost due to his NIHL.
The MoD has offered him around £58,000, with its barristers claiming that his NIHL has not had and will not have any impact on his future income.
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In a witness statement, Mr Lambie said he was first exposed to loud military noise without hearing protection on firing ranges as a cadet from the age of 13, before joining the Royal Marines in 1998.
He was diagnosed with NIHL in 2002, but said “nothing was put in place to prevent me from being exposed to loud noise”.
Ahead of a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011, members of his unit underwent a pre-medical screening, including a hearing test, which Mr Lambie said he was “very conscious” about as his “entire career was spent training for deployment”.
He failed one test but passed a retake as he “watched the medic doing the hearing test press the button for the tone and then I pressed my clicker straight away”.
Mr Lambie said the medic conducting the tests was “completely aware” of this and was “happy for me to do this to allow me to get a good grading and be deployed”.
He said: “We all knew that the emphasis on the staff was to ensure that Marines passed all the tests they needed to pass for deployment, as the MoD needed as many people as possible to deploy.
“This is why the medics helped us pass our medicals.
“Many members of my unit joked about how they were cheating the hearing tests to ensure they passed them and how they could go on deployment.
“After I did it, I spoke to a lot of my unit and I realised that many of them had done what I did to ensure they passed, regardless of whether they actually needed to.”
Mr Lambie is now a defence and security consultant after being discharged in 2021, but his barrister, Harry Steinberg KC, said that the NIHL has “affected his career prospects”, including preventing him from joining the police and fire service.
The MoD has accepted “primary causation” in Mr Lambie’s case, but disputes how much he should receive.
David Platt KC, for the department, said in written submissions that Mr Lambie’s “instance of faking” the hearing test in 2011 was an “undoubtedly regrettable” but “apparently isolated instance of cheating”.
He continued that the sums Mr Lambie had claimed for were “wholly unrealistic”, stating: “Mr Lambie’s NIHL has not impeded his career progress so far and is unlikely to do so in the future.
He added: “He does not allege that his hearing deficit made it more difficult for him to obtain a job.
“His hearing deficit is evidently not inhibiting his career progression.”
Mr Lambie’s case is being heard alongside those of former infantryman Jack Craggs, former signaller David Lloyd and former rifleman and signaller Michael Evans, who suffer from NIHL and tinnitus.
Mr Steinberg said: “All describe being regularly exposed to excessive noise, often without the benefit of any hearing protection at all.”
At a hearing in July last year, the MoD admitted that it had a duty of care to former personnel, having disputed this in earlier legal action.
It also accepted that noise exposure during service caused hearing loss among former personnel, but disputes the extent to which this happened in some individual cases.
The majority of the 10,000 claimants are represented by one law firm, Hugh James, which has previously agreed on a “matrix” with the MoD to determine compensation claims.
The trial before Mr Justice Garnham is due to last nine weeks.