The High Court awarded €4,342,073.62 for the future care of Amy Vance, a woman with severe cerebral palsy, after a hearing on the care she would need and her life expectancy. The judgment was delivered by Mr Justice Cross on 16 February 2017.
The case concerned the remaining issue in proceedings settled in 2011. Under that settlement, the second defendant, Chris King, was removed from the proceedings and a settlement provided for €1,165,677 for specified damages, costs and accommodation works, plus €70,000 for two years of care. Liability had been admitted. Vance was made a Ward of Court in April 2012. A further interim settlement had covered care to 1 December 2016.
By agreement, the 2017 hearing dealt with the cost of future care for the rest of Vance’s life. The parties accepted that her mother, Rebecca Midleton, should not have to provide her specialist care. The dispute was over the level and cost of professional care.
The defendants proposed one full-time carer, with another available for specified hours and emergencies. The plaintiff’s experts sought two carers whenever Vance was not at her day centre, including two at night, one of whom could sleep. The judge accepted the plaintiff’s proposed carer coverage. He found that the need for two people to transfer or manoeuvre Vance could arise unpredictably, and that relying on an on-call carer could leave her distressed or waiting for necessary care.
The judge allowed one hour of nursing or equivalent clinical support each week and accepted the defendants’ lower case-management hours, calculated at five per cent of the care total. He rejected the requested lead personal assistant, finding that a resident carer could do the administrative work during periods when Vance did not need care.
The judge set the weekly care cost at €7,071.83. He considered competing expert evidence on life expectancy and chose the plaintiff’s expert’s clinical estimate of 12 to 14 additional years, taking 13 years as the likely period. The court’s order was for €4,342,073.62: €360,663.33 for 2017 and €3,981,440.29 for the remaining period allowed. The judgment does not specify a separate order for costs.