The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by a GAA club and three individuals against a finding that they were liable for a camogie coach’s fall on slippery seating at a Roscrea pitch. It upheld the High Court’s 50/50 apportionment of liability between the plaintiff and defendants.
The appeal concerned liability only. The High Court had assessed general damages at €90,000 and agreed special damages at €4,000. After apportioning liability equally, it entered a net decree of €47,000 for the plaintiff, with costs on the Circuit Court scale and a certificate for senior counsel. The defendants did not appeal the damages assessment, and the plaintiff brought no cross-appeal.
The plaintiff, a long-time camogie player, went to Roscrea GAA pitch on 4 December 2017 to help train junior players. As training was about to start, she heard a car arrive in the car park and tried to look over rows of concrete seating by stepping across them. She could instead have walked a few yards to a pedestrian entrance in the surrounding wall. Wearing studded hurling boots, she fell as she stepped over the first row, striking the second row with her chest and the third with her face. She suffered serious facial injuries.
The seats had originally been bare concrete, but metal sheeting covered in plastic had been fitted around 10 to 15 years before the accident. The plaintiff’s engineer said the smooth surface had little or no slip resistance, particularly when wet or frosty. The defendants’ engineer accepted that people, including children, walked and stood on the seats, that the cladding made slipping more likely than bare concrete, and that he would not recommend the surface. He also accepted that the smooth surface caused the plaintiff’s foot to slide.
The High Court found that people commonly stepped over, stood on and walked along the seats, making contact with their surface foreseeable. It found the defendants negligent for installing the slippery cladding and concluded that the fall was unlikely to have happened in the manner described without it. The judge also found the plaintiff contributorily negligent for not taking the nearby pedestrian route and for failing to step safely over the bench.
On appeal, the defendants argued that the trial judge was not entitled to find a breach of their duty under the Occupiers Liability Act 1995, and that the precise accident mechanism was not foreseeable. The Court of Appeal said the risk of someone falling when their foot slipped on the seats was foreseeable, even if the exact sequence was not. It held that the plaintiff’s failure to take care did not absolve the defendants, and that the trial judge was entitled to apportion liability equally. The appeal was dismissed.