The High Court awarded three young people a combined €815,051.01 in damages for injuries suffered in a 1999 collision, while rejecting claims that they were contributorily negligent for not wearing seatbelts.
In a judgment delivered on 31 July 2006, Mr Justice Michael Peart awarded Eamonn McNeilis €165,252.74, Sean McNeilis €204,165.96 and Martha McGill €445,632.31. The cases were heard together because they arose from the same crash on the road from Ardara to Letterkenny on 13 August 1999.
The children were among five travelling in the back of a Volkswagen Passat. It had three seatbelts available. The car was struck head-on by a Nova that had gone out of control at a bend. The Nova’s driver was the first defendant, Ann Armstrong, who accepted that the collision resulted from her negligence. The judge said the Passat’s driver, Grainne McNeilis, had no chance to avoid the impact.
The judge found that the children were not contributorily negligent. He considered their ages and maturity, the crowded back seat and the absence of evidence that anyone had told them to use the available belts. The driver had withdrawn her contributory negligence plea against the children.
The court also found that the driver was not in breach of the seatbelt regulations, which applied only so far as reasonably practicable when three or more children under 15 were being carried. But she owed the children a common law duty to transport them as safely as reasonably practicable. The judge found she had not considered how to manage the fact that there were five children but only three belts, and had therefore breached that duty.
That finding did not make the driver liable to contribute to the awards. The judge concluded that the collision was exceptionally severe and that the children would probably have suffered serious injuries even if restrained. He was not satisfied that Armstrong had proved the injuries would have been less serious with seatbelts. Because the necessary causal link between the driver’s breach and the injuries was not established, she was not required to contribute to the damages.
Eamonn, who was eight at the time, suffered fractures to both thighs. Sean, then almost 13, fractured his right thigh and later underwent surgery to address a leg-length difference. Martha, then 14, suffered severe hip and leg injuries, underwent a hip replacement and was expected to need further replacements. The awards included agreed special damages of €65,252.74 for Eamonn, €84,165.96 for Sean and €70,632.31 for Martha.
The judge also raised, without deciding, whether carrying more children in a car than there are available seatbelts could itself be negligent. He said that question would have to be decided in another case.