In contrast to a recent trend of personal injury awards being reduced by appellate courts, the Court of Appeal recently upheld a High Court award of damages for €65,000. Mark Collins has briefly summarised the findings.
Case Summary
The background to the case is that in December 2015 Aoibhe Naghten, aged ten years old at the time, was injured when she fell at an ice skating rink and another skater inadvertently skated over the back of her hand. The Plaintiff, suing through her mother, issued proceedings against Cool Running Events Limited who operated the ice rink at Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
The Plaintiff claimed, amongst other things, that there was overcrowding and inadequate supervision in the ice-rink on the day when 281 people had purchased tickets for the particular session. In contrast, the Defendant denied all claims and pleaded that the Plaintiff voluntarily assumed the risk of being injured, was the author of her own misfortune, that her mother failed to exercise reasonable supervision and her mother failed to have regard for her daughter’s safety.
Decision
In 2018, the High Court found the Defendant liable and awarded €65,000 in general damages to the Plaintiff. The Defendant appealed the claim on both liability and the quantum of the award.
A considerable amount of time at the High Court hearing focused on the differing expert engineering opinion put forward on behalf of the Plaintiff and the Defendant respectively. Interestingly, during cross-examination the Defendant’s expert accepted that he hadn’t examined all of the relevant facts. The High Court expressed a clear preference for the Plaintiff’s expert’s evidence. Additionally, the Defendant failed to put forward a single witness to dispute the factual evidence of the three witnesses for the Plaintiff, despite having witnesses present in court.
The Court of Appeal considered all of the evidence before the High Court and found that there was more than ample evidence available to the High Court Judge which entitled her to conclude that the Defendant had been negligent in this case and such negligence caused the Plaintiff’s accident. The appeal was dismissed and the costs of the appeal are awarded to the Plaintiff.
Please click here to read the Court of Appeal Judgment in full.
If you would like to discuss a personal injuries case or have queries in relation to the above, please contact our office and ask to speak with Mark Collins or alternatively send an email to Mark@tomcollins.ie.
