Man who pulled handbrake and flipped car while wife was driving strives to clear name

The Court of Appeal has said the case is 'simple'

Fratton train station in Portsmouth where the couple were trying to get to (Google Maps)

A husband who pulled the handbrake while his wife was driving is in a legal battle to prove he acted "reasonably" after his actions caused the vehicle to flip on its roof.

Steven Oldfield was in the car with his wife Catherine when a heated argument about her "catastrophic driving" led him to pull the handbrake, sending the car into a curb and then onto its roof in the middle of a road in Portsmouth.

After being found guilty of causing a danger to other road users by interfering with a motor vehicle in 2014, Mr Oldfield has taken his case from Portsmouth Crown Court to the Court of Appeal in London, and now to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

"What happened has destroyed my business. I'm a sound engineer and we worked a lot in schools and, after this, the phone just stopped ringing," he said, according to the Daily Telegraph.

"All they saw was a monster who'd done this to his wife."

The car model that Ms Oldfield was driving when her husband pulled the handbrake (The car model that Ms Oldfield was driving when her husband pulled the handbrake)

Mr Oldfield was originally given a community order with 100 hours of unpaid work, but this was later reduced to a conditional discharge.

At the Crown Court in August more than a year ago, he told the jury he had no option but to halt the car after deciding his wife was not capable of driving safely.

"I decided she was unfit to drive and told her we'd missed our train anywy... I tried to stop the car with the handbrake. I had no choice," he said.

Ms Oldfield, with whom Mr Oldfield says he has a strong relationship, was slightly injured in the incident and her husband's head made a large bulge in the roof of the car.

On those grounds, the Crown Court judge said the action was "a highly irresponsible thing to have done, for which there was no excuse whatsoever".

The Court of Appeal judges to whom Mr Oldfield turned next also took the view of the lower court judges and dismissed the appeal.

Lady Justice Rafferty said the case the jury was looking at was "simple".

"Did Mr Oldfield have any reasonable cause to pull on the handbrake, and did he do it in circumstances which it would have been obvious to a reasonable person were dangerous?" she said to the court.

Yet outside of the court, Mr Oldfield said he would continue to try to clear his name.

He promised to take the case before the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is the independent body that investigates suspected miscarriages of justice.

The number of people seriously injured or killed in car accidents in the UK rose to 24,850 people in the first six months of 2014.