The High Court has refused a woman’s appeal seeking CCTV footage from a Supermacs restaurant in Eyre Square, Galway, concerning an incident in which she says a chair broke beneath her in January 2017.
Mr Justice Barr, giving judgment on 16 November 2020, affirmed the Circuit Court order refusing discovery of the footage. The ruling concerned that category of documents only; it did not determine the plaintiff’s personal injury claim at trial.
The plaintiff’s case is that she sat on a chair while waiting for food on 6 January 2017, the chair broke, and she fell to the ground and was injured. Supermacs’ defence disputed that she fell as a consequence of the break and denied the alleged injuries and negligence. At the High Court hearing, however, the defendant’s counsel said the company accepted that the chair was defective and that an open letter would formally confirm that position. The judge said liability, as distinct from causation and the amount of any damages, was therefore no longer a live issue.
The plaintiff sought the CCTV recording as part of a discovery application. Her counsel argued that footage could provide the best evidence of what happened. He also submitted that the defendant had failed to preserve the broken chair despite an early request, leaving the plaintiff’s engineer unable to examine it and prejudicing her case.
The defendant argued that the chair’s absence was immaterial because the defect was accepted. It said the footage was sought so the plaintiff could check whether it contradicted her pleaded account before giving evidence.
The judge concluded that, given the state of the issues, the footage’s only purpose would be to test the plaintiff’s credibility about whether she fell to the ground. Relying on authorities concerning discovery sought solely for cross-examination or credibility, he found that was not a proper basis to order disclosure. He noted that the plaintiff could give evidence herself, call her companion and potentially identify other witnesses, including through an accident report form the defendant had agreed to disclose.
The High Court therefore refused the application and affirmed the Circuit Court’s order on the CCTV category. The judgment did not resolve the disputed causation or injury issues.