The High Court has awarded a Cork woman €170,564 after finding that an uninsured van struck her while she was standing in a parking space on Main Street, Carrigtwohill.
Josephine Higgins claimed that Richard Coleman’s van hit her left knee on 13 February 2020 as she held a parking space for her husband. Mr Coleman denied hitting her and disputed liability, causation and aspects of her expert evidence.
Mr Justice Micheál P. O’Higgins found on the balance of probabilities that Mr Coleman misjudged the situation, failed to keep a proper lookout and inadvertently struck Ms Higgins. The judge accepted that the impact caused her body to jerk and resulted in injuries despite being a low-to-moderate collision.
The court found that her most serious injury was a prolonged psychiatric adjustment disorder involving anxiety, depression, anger and impaired daily functioning. It also found that the accident precipitated ongoing lower-back symptoms which substantially affected her work managing a portfolio of rental properties and reduced her enjoyment of ordinary activities.
However, the judge did not accept that her later neck and shoulder complaints or an Achilles tendon injury in 2025 were caused by the accident.
A major issue concerned Ms Higgins’s claim for financial losses. Her accountant’s report advanced a claim of €1.752 million, including €1.4 million for earnings losses and €342,602 for alleged lost capital appreciation. The court found that claim grossly excessive and unrealistic, criticised failures to independently verify assumptions and identified double counting in parts of the report.
The judge nevertheless accepted that Ms Higgins had suffered genuine rental-income losses because her injuries significantly reduced her ability to manage, maintain and re-let properties. He allowed €15,000 a year for four years, totalling €60,000.
The final award comprised €75,000 for psychiatric injury, a €22,000 uplift for back injuries, €60,000 for past earnings loss and €13,564 in special damages, producing a total judgment of €170,564.