The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision awarding €158,864 to a woman who fell in a courtyard beside her workplace in Cranmore, Sligo, after finding there was no credible evidence that a tripping hazard caused her fall.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice McGovern on 30 January 2020, allowed an appeal by the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the Minister for Social Protection, Ireland and the Attorney General. The appeal challenged both liability and the amount awarded.
The woman fell on 1 September 2014. The High Court had found that her toe snagged on a raised lip in a concrete paver and that movement in a slab caused the accident. It held the defendants negligent and awarded €80,000 in general damages and €78,864 in special damages, including loss of earnings.
But CCTV footage showed that the woman had identified the wrong place to her engineer when describing where she fell. She accepted the error, and the engineer accepted that his report was based on an inspection of a nearby area. The footage also showed she was using her phone when she fell, contrary to the account recorded by the engineer that her phone had flown from her pocket.
The Court of Appeal said the engineer accepted there was no tripping hazard at the actual fall location. An engineer called by the defendants also found no raised lip there. The court said there was no evidence that the paving slab had moved, and described the respondent’s engineer’s suggestion that a hazard must have existed because she fell as speculation.
The court said the claimant had to prove that a hazard caused the fall and that it resulted from negligence or breach of duty. It concluded the High Court judge had filled gaps in the evidence and that it was not open to her to find that a hazard or slab movement caused the fall.
The defendants had also argued that general damages exceeded the Book of Quantum guidelines and challenged the award for loss of earnings. The Court of Appeal said it was unnecessary to decide those issues after overturning the liability finding. The judgment allows the appeal; it does not determine the quantum challenge on its merits.