The High Court has ruled that a Penneys employee who alleged she was injured in a fall at the company’s Mary Street store could not add a cleaning contractor to her personal injuries case without first obtaining authorisation from the Personal Injuries Assessment Board.
Linda Sherry alleged that she slipped while descending a wet staircase at the Dublin department store on January 5, 2004. She issued proceedings against her employer, Primark Limited trading as Penneys, on May 31 that year, one day before the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003 came into force.
Penneys later delivered a defence seeking to attribute responsibility for the alleged accident to Grosvenor Cleaning Services Limited. When Penneys applied in 2006 to bring Grosvenor into the case as a third party, Sherry instead applied to have the cleaning company joined directly as a co-defendant. The High Court made that order on October 23, 2006.
Sherry did not apply to PIAB in respect of Grosvenor until January 2008. PIAB issued an authorisation the following month. She later sought judgment against Grosvenor for failing to deliver a defence.
Mr Justice O’Neill refused that application. He held that section 12 of the 2003 Act created more than a procedural requirement. It imposed a jurisdictional condition: for claims covered by the Act, a claimant must first apply to PIAB and receive an authorisation before bringing court proceedings.
The judge also held that a plaintiff’s application to join an additional defendant amounts to the bringing of proceedings for this purpose. Because Sherry sought to join Grosvenor after the Act had commenced, she required PIAB authorisation beforehand.
The later authorisation could not retrospectively fix the defect. O’Neill J said it appeared necessary to set aside the earlier order adding Grosvenor as a co-defendant.
The ruling dealt only with the procedural validity of the claim against Grosvenor. It did not determine liability for Sherry’s alleged accident or her underlying damages claim against Penneys.