The High Court awarded a serving Garda €50,000 in general compensation for injuries caused by a 2002 collision involving his patrol car. It also ordered payment of €2,556.59 in pecuniary expenses, an amount agreed by the parties.
Mr Justice Bernard J. Barton delivered the judgment on 30 January 2017. The proceedings had been authorised in November 2007 and concerned a collision on the Granard to Edgeworthstown Road, near Cranly, County Longford, while the applicant was on duty.
The judgment said the applicant and a colleague had gone to investigate a car that had crashed into a ditch. The patrol car’s headlights and blue lights were on. An oncoming vehicle travelling at high speed struck it, and the airbag hit the applicant in the face. He was taken by ambulance to hospital and reported pain in his neck, chest, arms, lower back and right leg, as well as later headaches and psychological symptoms including disturbed sleep, flashbacks and anxiety.
The court considered the collision against the applicant’s earlier back injury from a serious assault in 1998. In proceedings over that assault, an award of €100,000 had been made in 2005. A medical opinion accepted in those proceedings attributed 70% of the applicant’s ongoing back symptoms to the assault, 20% to the later collision and 10% to non-traumatic causes. The judge found no significant causally related development warranting a departure from that apportionment, while allowing for some inflation.
The judge accepted the respondent’s medical evidence that the collision aggravated, and delayed recovery from, underlying degenerative changes in the applicant’s neck and upper spine. However, the court found the collision’s contribution to symptoms experienced three to four years later was minimal, and that later symptoms were more likely due to the progressive underlying condition. The judgment also recorded that chest and lower right leg soft tissue injuries resolved relatively quickly, and that the applicant had essentially recovered well, with low-grade residual problems principally involving his back.
The court assessed €50,000 for the soft tissue back injuries and aggravation of the pre-existing back condition, together with the other physical and psychological injuries attributed to the collision. It ordered that amount plus the agreed expenses. The judgment does not state a separate award for the earlier assault proceedings as part of this order.