Superfit female soldier injured in exercise sues for £2million compensation

A super-fit female solider injured during an exercise designed to test women’s front line combat readiness is now fighting for £2million compensation over the loss of her Army career.

Captain Megan Lloyd, 39, was an ‘exceptional’ soldier who served in the Royal Corps of Signals and Intelligence Corps and went on to serve three tours in Afghanistan.

The distance runner and mountaineer, who ran a desert ultra marathon in 2021, first joined the Army as a teenager to escape her life on an Essex estate and did her first tour of Afghanistan aged 21.

She planned to make the Army her life, having joined up 23 years ago, but was medically discharged after being injured whilst taking part in a research study carried out in August 2018 to assess ‘the integration of women into ground close combat roles’.

Capt Lloyd injured her hip so badly she could no longer play an active role in the forces and blames her participation in the study for putting her body under excessive strain.

She is suing the Ministry of Defence at the High Court, but it denies liability, insisting that Capt Lloyd’s injury had its origins prior to the 2018 study.

According to claim documents filed at the court, part of the study – a collaboration between the Army and University of Chichester – involved an intensive ‘fire and movement’ exercise including a ’15-metre best effort crawl’ plus a similar distance ‘dash from prone’.

Capt Lloyd had to complete the drill while carrying 32 kilos in weight – including a rifle, helmet and body armour – and claims the tests were designed to be tackled ‘to exhaustion’.

While springing to her feet from a prone position, she wrenched her left hip, resulting in disastrously torn cartilage around the joint due to ‘the hip moving rapidly from full extension to hyperflexion while excessively loaded’.

Her injures forced her to downscale her military duties, leaving her on ‘restricted duties’, before the ‘exceptional’ soldier was medically discharged’ in January this year.

Now suing the MoD for negligence in failing to carry out a proper risk assessment, Capt Lloyd says she has ‘lost the likelihood of a long and successful military career’.

But lawyers for the MoD say they had no hand in organising the 2018 trial, which they claim was the University of Chichester’s responsibility.

Capt Lloyd injured her hip so badly she could no longer play an active role in the forces

On top of this, they point out that Capt Lloyd’s hip problems could well be the legacy of years spent training for the gruelling sporting challenges she took on, as well as military training.

Even as a young recruit she had a brush with injuries, says barrister Dominic Ruck Keene in the MoD’s defence to the claim, highlighting an incident soon after she first enlisted when she broke both her legs after falling off a climbing net.

He also pinpointed a medical report from 2017 disclosing a six-month history of left hip pain and disputed claims that the 2018 fitness study at the heart of the case was designed to be completed ‘to exhaustion’.

‘The tear is likely to have pre-existed the study,’ he insisted, claiming the tests Capt Lloyd took part in carried no extreme risks of injury beyond those of ‘routine military duties’.

The case reached court last week for a pre-trial hearing in which lawyers discussed case management issues and the shape of the evidence to be heard at the trial.

The court heard the court fight involves complex medical issues – particularly over the cause of her current condition – with Capt Lloyd having undergone three operations due to her hip problems.

There is also a question mark over whether she gave full ‘informed consent’ for her participation in the academic study.

The case will return to court for a full trial of the claim at a later date, unless it is settled first.

According to WeAreTheCity, as a teenager Megan gained the top GCSE grades in her year in a failing school and rose to Head Girl.

She became a mother aged 26 in 2011, juggling her career with childcare and rising through the ranks.