The High Court has approved a €400,000 settlement in personal injuries proceedings brought on behalf of a young woman who was hit by a train after entering a railway line from the back of her family home in 2012.
In a judgment delivered on 8 April 2022, Mr Justice Garrett Simons ruled that accepting the tender was in the woman’s best interests. The defendants, Iarnród Éireann and Tipperary County Council, made the offer without admitting liability. The court did not decide whether they were responsible for the accident.
The woman was a minor when the tender was made, but had reached the age of majority by the time the approval application returned to court in March 2022. Although no formal finding had been made that she was a person of unsound mind, the judge was satisfied from medical and sworn evidence from her mother that she lacked capacity to give informed consent to the settlement. He considered the proposal under the court’s inherent jurisdiction.
The claim alleged that the defendants had failed to provide or properly maintain a fence or wall between the family home, leased from the council, and the railway line. The woman suffered a concussion, collapsed lung, fractured arm and other injuries. She later developed epilepsy. Medical opinions differed on whether the 2012 head injury caused or contributed to the epilepsy; the judge said the evidence showed a plausible connection but would not by itself establish causation on the balance of probabilities at trial.
The medical evidence also described a 2016 episode, referred to as a stroke, that caused neurological regression and permanent brain injury. The judge said the balance of the evidence treated it as a significant intervening event, with no convincing evidence connecting it to the 2012 accident. He concluded that a trial carried a real risk of an award below the tender, including if the plaintiff could not establish the required causal links.
The order directs that €50,000 be paid to the plaintiff’s solicitor, on an undertaking to pass it to the parents, to recompense additional day-to-day expenses. The remaining €350,000 is to be paid into court to the credit of the action and the woman. The judge also directed that an application be made to have her considered for wardship; he did not make a wardship order. The plaintiff was awarded costs, including the costs of the wardship application, subject to adjudication if the parties cannot agree.