The High Court has ordered the State defendants to pay a serving Defence Forces member €80,000 in general damages for a serious ankle injury sustained during his first military parachute jump at the Curragh Camp in 2010.
In a judgment delivered on 25 May 2017, Mr Justice Bernard J. Barton found that the defendants were negligent in failing to provide lateral-drift training and to use an effective system for giving instructions to trainee parachutists as they descended. The case proceeded in common-law negligence; a pleaded claim for breach of statutory duty was not pursued.
The plaintiff’s main parachute lines became twisted during the jump. He tried to free them and deployed his reserve chute, but suffered a fracture-dislocation of his right ankle on landing. The parties disputed whether ground staff had instructed him to stop kicking and prepare for landing. The judge accepted the plaintiff’s evidence that he heard no instructions after being told to jump, and found that the defence witnesses who said instructions had been given were mistaken. The court concluded that the absence of instructions contributed to his failure to adopt the trained parachute landing roll.
The judge accepted expert evidence that lateral-drift training would ordinarily better prepare a student for such a landing, and found that the plaintiff should have received it. He did not decide whether that omission independently caused the injury: he said the question was unnecessary because the plaintiff had not adopted the landing position for which he had been trained.
The court rejected the defendants’ argument that the plaintiff was responsible for his own misfortune and found no contributory negligence. It said he had been caught in a sudden emergency not of his making and that, without instructions from the ground, it was not unreasonable for him to keep trying to free the parachute lines.
The injury required several operations. The court heard that the plaintiff continued to experience pain, swelling and restricted ankle movement, and faced a risk of further surgery and arthritis. It awarded €45,000 for past pain and suffering and €35,000 for future pain and suffering, totalling €80,000. No claim was made for lost earnings or allowances.