IT WAS an unprovoked attack on a man in his own home by an assailant whose identity was never in doubt.

But Norman Grant knew that he had little chance of securing a conviction when he was set upon by his new vacuum cleaner and thrown down the stairs.

Instead the former oil worker decided to sue the manufacturers of the rogue machine and yesterday he accepted more than £10,000 damages over the disgraced appliance which knocked him down the stairs at his home in Aberdeen.

Mr Grant, 59, had told Aberdeen Sheriff Court in June that he was at the top of the stairs using his DC07 to clean cobwebs from the ceiling when the machine suddenly lashed out at him, causing him to fall backwards.

Once he recovered from the shock, Mr Grant sued Dyson, the manufacturers of Britain’s bestselling vacuum cleaners, for £50,000. Mr Grant had told the court that he suffered painful head and wrist injuries and bruising in the fall. “I felt generally shook up,” he said.

Martin Sinclair, Mr Grant’s lawyer, confirmed that the case had been settled out of court. It is believed that Mr Grant accepted a five-figure sum from the cleaning and electrical company, but Mr Sinclair would not give an exact amount Mr Grant had told the court that he had read all the instructions for his new upright model before using it for the first time on March 3, 2002.

“I set it up, put in the plug and switched it on. Everything seemed to be okay,” he said. “I needed the hose extension with the brush at the end to suck up the cobwebs. I was on the top step, going as near as I could to the cobwebs. I stretched out and got to the nearest one.

“Then the extension just broke apart and came back at me. Suddenly there was this flash and something struck me on the arm and the next minute I found myself at the bottom of the stairs.

“I came to, stood up and wondered what had happened. It just came at me. I was so surprised. My initial thoughts were that I had maybe put on the machine wrongly. I had to sit down for a while.”

After a cup of tea and two paracetamol, Mr Grant tackled the cleaner again. “I felt stupid. I thought I had done something wrong,” he said. “I put it back together again. I stretched the cable again and it came apart again. I thought that was strange. It came off immediately. I said, there’s a fault with the machine.”

Mr Grant, who bought his Dyson for £230 from a shop in Aberdeen the day before the accident, then demonstrated to the court how the attack happened. He added that the tussle with the vacuum cleaner had left him with painful wrists and headaches. Mr Grant, who is semi-retired and lives with his partner, Jessie Jack, 60, has not worked since the fall.

Dyson admitted liability for the accident but denied that it was a fault common to other machines. A spokesman said: “This was a peculiar and isolated incident.”

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