The Court of Appeal has dismissed an ice rink operator’s appeal against a finding that it was negligent in the management of a rink where a 10-year-old girl was injured, leaving in place a €65,000 damages award made by the High Court.
The child fell while leaving the seasonal pop-up rink in Blanchardstown on 30 December 2015. Another skater then went over her hand with an ice skate, causing lacerations. The appeal judgment said she recovered well but was left with visible scarring.
The High Court found that the rink operator, Cool Running Events Limited, had failed to take reasonable care. The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge’s findings were supported by evidence and could not be displaced by the appeal court’s review of CCTV footage. Three witnesses who were present described the rink as crowded, particularly around the single exit, and said no marshal was supervising the exit when the child fell. The defendant called no witness who had been present at the accident.
The operator challenged both liability and the amount of damages. The Court of Appeal rejected its challenge to liability, noting that the trial judge had preferred the evidence of the plaintiff’s engineer to that of the operator’s engineer. The defendant’s engineer was instructed after the first trial had begun and initially prepared a report critiquing the plaintiff’s report without examining all relevant facts. The Court of Appeal said the late instruction had given the defendant an unfair litigation advantage, but reserved for another case the question of whether an expert in those circumstances should be allowed to testify.
The court also refused the operator’s request for current photographs of the child’s scars. No advance application had been made to introduce new evidence on appeal, and the damages award had to be assessed on the injuries as they appeared at the High Court hearing. The appeal court said it therefore had no basis to evaluate whether the trial judge had erred in the award.
The judgment also criticised the operator’s defence for alleging that the child and her mother had contributed to the accident or failed to obtain proper treatment, despite those allegations not being pursued with evidence at trial. The court said the requirement to verify personal-injury pleadings applies to defendants as well as plaintiffs.
The court’s provisional view was that the child was entitled to her appeal costs. The defendant had 14 days to seek a brief further hearing on costs; if it did not, an order in those terms would be made.