The High Court awarded Mary Mc Hugh €105,500 in a personal injuries action arising from a head-on collision on 21 December 2019. The sum comprises €92,500 in general damages for pain and suffering to date and into the future, and €13,000 in special damages agreed by the parties.
The court assessed damages; the judgment does not determine liability. It said the defendant’s vehicle was on the incorrect side of the road when it collided with Ms Mc Hugh’s car on a dark, narrow country road. Her vehicle was written off, and she sustained injuries including fractures to her right foot, a head and neck injury, lower back and hip injuries, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The judge placed the right-foot injury in the Personal Injuries Guidelines’ serious-injury category, which carries a range of €38,000 to €75,000, and awarded €60,000. The fractures healed in a deformed position, causing arthritis, continuing pain and difficulty walking. The court said the pain and deformity were permanent, and that further surgery or pain-relieving injections might be needed. The award for the right foot also included a minor soft-tissue injury to the left foot.
The court separately considered the other injuries and assessed their individual values at €65,000. It said an uplift could, in an appropriate case, exceed damages for the dominant injury. To account for overlapping effects, it assessed each additional injury under the guidelines and discounted the combined value. In this case it awarded a €32,500 uplift.
The court assessed PTSD at €35,000 if it had been the main injury, saying Ms Mc Hugh continued to have significant symptoms despite improvement in her depression with treatment. It treated her neck injury as minor and substantially recovered within one to two years. It found her back and right-hip injuries were acceleration or exacerbation of pre-existing problems, classifying each as minor. The hip problem was resolved by a total hip replacement in July 2021; the judge put the combined main-injury value of the back and hip at €20,000.
The judgment says the decree is for €105,500 in total, including the agreed special damages. The general-damages award is €92,500, made up of €60,000 for the dominant foot injury and the €32,500 uplift for the additional injuries.