BATTLE lines have been drawn in the case of Swindon schoolboy, Henry Webster, who suffered life-shattering injuries in a hammer attack and is now claiming millions in compensation.

A judge heard that lawyers for Henry and Ridgeway School in Wroughton remain “diametrically opposed.”

Scores of witnesses – including top education experts, past and possibly even current pupils at the school – are set to testify in a case which is itself likely to run up seven-figure legal bills.

Henry’s lawyers say the hammer attack at the school wrecked his life and was the direct result of a “culture of racist bullying and harassment” that infected the school.

His barrister, Robert Glancy QC, told the Court “undue indulgence and leniency” towards disaffected Asian pupils at the 1,400-pupil school, created an “obvious risk of racial violence” for which 15-year-old Henry paid a terrible price.

Members of a schoolyard gang known as “Asian Invasion” – along with young men from outside the school thought to have been summoned by mobile phone – savagely beat bullying victim Henry near the school’s tennis courts in January 2007, said the QC.

One of the outsiders laid into him with a claw hammer, fracturing his skull and leaving the teenager from Wroughton brain damaged.

Henry is claiming massive damages, but the school’s legal team points out that the attack took place after school hours and insists that, short of stopping and searching every visitor, nothing could have been done to prevent what happened.

The school’s duty was to discipline pupils, not outside adults, and arguments that laxity in enforcing school rules contributed to the attack on Henry have been described by the school’s barrister, Ronald Walker QC, as “fanciful” and “implausible”.

At the High Court in London yesterday, Mr Justice Holroyde gave final directions for the start of the hearing on Monday.

The court heard two of the star witnesses in the case will be leading education expert, Professor Gus John – who will be testifying for Henry – and former headmistress and best-selling author, Lady Marie Stubbs, who will enter the witness box in support of the school.

Mr Walker told the judge that, in his expert report, Professor John has been “highly critical of the school in almost every respect”, but his views are “diametrically opposed” to those of Lady Stubbs.

Henry’s younger brother, Joseph, his mother Elizabeth, and his stepfather, Roger Durnford, who all say they were left deeply traumatised by witnessing Henry fighting for his life, are also seeking damages payouts.