THE mother of hammer attack victim Henry Webster says the family will not appeal against a court ruling which found Ridgeway School was not negligent prior to the incident which left him brain damaged.

Speaking yesterday as judge Mr Justice Nicol ordered the family to pay the school’s £750,000 legal costs, Liz Webster said they did not have the energy to fight on.

She said: “We have had three years of sheer hell and we’ve decided not to appeal against the decision because it’s taken too much of a toll on us personally.

“It is just too stressful having to revisit it all the time. We just want closure for it.”

Mrs Webster added: “We don’t agree with the judge’s decision, however we feel absolutely exhausted from the process.

“This litigation wasn’t about compensation, Henry has always been entitled to compensation from the criminal injuries scheme, this was about making Ridgeway School a safer place.”

Mrs Webster, son Jo and husband Roger Durnford, who were all deeply traumatised by witnessing Henry fighting for his life, also had their damages claims dismissed last month.

“I come through this feeling very confused by the law and let down,” she said.

Judge Nicol ruled that while the Websters had not won the 25-day High Court hearing, there was “nothing improper” in a mother’s wish to have the Wroughton secondary school “brought to book” over the attack on her teenage son.

Henry’s legal team had blamed life-shattering injuries he suffered in the January 2007 attack near the school tennis courts on a “culture of racist bullying and harassment”.

However, the school was last month cleared by the judge of all blame for the incident – in which an outsider summoned to the school fractured Henry’s skull with a claw hammer.

Having lost the case, Henry’s family have been ordered to pay the school’s legal costs, which the judge said yesterday amounted to about £750,000.

Henry’s legal team’s bills are likely to be of a similar order, but he and his family will not lose out personally because they fought their case on a no-win, no-fee basis, backed by insurance.

The judge accepted that Henry’s case under the Human Rights Act had been “hopeless”. As not even the hammer attacker’s co-accused at the criminal trial had been aware he was carrying such a weapon, it was hard to see how the school could have been alerted to it, he said.

Mr Justice Nicol ordered the Websters to pay the school’s legal costs on the human rights issue on the “indemnity” basis. The school’s lawyers’ bills run up on other issues will, be paid only on the “standard” basis.

The Websters were yesterday ordered to pay £250,000 on account.