The High Court has awarded €40,000 in general damages to a former pupil who suffered an injury to his left kidney after falling against a sharp-edged concrete kerb in a school playground in 1992.
In a judgment delivered on 17 December 2004, Mr Justice Gilligan found that the defendant, who was the school manager at the time, was negligent for failing to take reasonable care over a danger he knew or ought to have known about. The court entered judgment for the plaintiff in the sum of €40,000.
The plaintiff was six and running when he collided with another pupil near the kerb and fell backwards onto it. The judgment said there was no dispute about how the accident happened. Parents had built the play area in the late 1980s using sand, soil and concrete breeze blocks laid on their sides. The school principal said the blocks had been in place for about four to five years before the accident.
The plaintiff’s engineer described the blocks as rough, sharp-edged and makeshift, and said smoother, rounded kerbing was available. The defendant’s engineer considered the exposed edges weathered and rounded, and argued that the plaintiff would have suffered the same internal injury against a different kerb. The judge preferred the evidence of the plaintiff’s mother and engineer about the blocks’ condition.
The judge found that sharp, rough-edged kerbing was inappropriate where young children would run and fall, and presented an unusual danger. He also found, on the balance of probabilities, that the impact with the sharp edge caused the kidney injury. He rejected the argument that the same injury would have occurred against rounded kerbing. No contributory negligence was found, given the plaintiff’s age.
The plaintiff was admitted to Letterkenny General Hospital and remained there until 15 June 1992. Medical evidence described scarring and a loss of kidney function, with estimates varying between 11% and 20%. By the later reviews recorded in the judgment, he was asymptomatic, and his urologist did not expect the injury to affect his future health or life expectancy. The court concluded that he had recovered and was unlikely to suffer adverse consequences in the future.