The High Court has held Dunnes Stores liable for a shop assistant’s back injury while she was lifting a box at its Newbridge store in April 2007. Mr Justice Barr awarded her €85,255, comprising €60,000 for past general damages, €20,000 for future pain and suffering and €5,255 in agreed special damages.
The plaintiff was lifting boxes of suitcases from a storeroom to the shop floor. The boxes weighed about 13 to 15 kilograms. She said she hurt her back while lifting the third box onto the upper shelf of a trolley. The court accepted her evidence that she had been bending with her back curved and knees straight, then raised her right knee to help lift the box.
The central liability dispute concerned the manual-handling training she received. The plaintiff denied that she had been shown the slideshow and videos described by the company’s health and safety manager, Andrew Birchall. The judge accepted her account that her induction consisted of a tour, a handbook and a uniform, and that she had been told to sign a training record. The record showed her signatures but was missing signatures from trainers for most listed modules.
The judge said that even if Birchall’s account of training was accepted, it was inadequate. His demonstration used a small box of A4 paper, unlike the large, bulky loads the plaintiff handled. The company had not checked whether she understood the instruction or followed up to see whether she was lifting safely. She also received no task-specific training when she moved from the Ladies’ to the Men’s department, where the work involved more bulky lifting, according to her evidence.
The court found that no risk assessment had been carried out for the plaintiff’s lifting duties. It concluded that the company breached its duties under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, the 1993 workplace regulations and common law. The judge also rejected the company’s argument that the plaintiff should have asked colleagues for help, accepting that they were busy and could not assist on each of her trips to the storeroom.
On the injury, the plaintiff’s orthopaedic specialist, Bruce Bough, considered her continuing lower-back and sciatic symptoms consistent with trauma to the L5/S1 disc and nearby joints, and said her chronic disability was likely to persist. The company’s specialist, Martin Walsh, considered significant ongoing problems absent and said exercise could lead to recovery over six to nine months. The judge preferred Bough’s evidence and found that the injury had affected the plaintiff’s work and social life, while she could manage clerical work but had limitations in recreation.