The High Court dismissed an appeal by Mandy Place against a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal decision that she had not established a prima facie case of misconduct against solicitor Sean Acton. The court said the appeal was out of time, but also considered its merits and found no reason to disturb the tribunal’s conclusion.
In a judgment delivered on 14 June 2010, President of the High Court Kearns said Place’s appeal concerned allegations about Acton’s handling of a damages claim arising from a fall at Shantalla National School in Galway on 21 May 2003. The tribunal had made its decision on 11 February 2010.
Place said she slipped on a step at the school entrance while collecting her son. The judgment records that she suffered a dislocated shoulder and a fracture of the humerus, and was unable to work for four months. She instructed Acton in October 2005, after previously instructing another solicitors’ firm.
The court said the account given to Acton and the other professional witnesses was that Place slipped on a wet marble strip just inside the doorway. It had been raining, and pedestrians entering the school had caused the area to become wet, the judgment said. At the Circuit Court hearing, Place also suggested that linoleum had caused or contributed to the fall; the High Court said that account was first raised on the hearing day. The Circuit Court had dismissed her damages claim, finding no evidence of a defect or a failure by the school authorities to take proper care.
Kearns said Acton had advised Place about the difficulties in succeeding with the claim and had taken appropriate steps to prepare it for hearing, including retaining an engineer, an orthopaedic surgeon and counsel. The High Court found that the affidavits before it raised no new matter suggesting the tribunal had erred.
The court therefore dismissed the appeal. Its ruling addressed the appeal against the tribunal’s misconduct decision; it did not reopen the Circuit Court’s dismissal of the underlying damages claim.