The High Court has ordered the Minister for Finance to pay €50,000 to a woman who was injured while working as an official observer in a Garda patrol car, finding that an assault during an arrest caused her later shoulder and neck symptoms.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Bernard J. Barton on 21 July 2017, arose under the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Acts. The woman was authorised to bring the proceedings in 2013 over an incident on Leeson Street, Dublin, on 12 June 2003.
She went to help a Garda colleague during an altercation and managed to handcuff one of the women involved. The woman pulled forcefully on the handcuff links attached to the applicant’s left arm, causing immediate severe shoulder pain. The applicant also described neck pain and numbness extending down her arm and into her fingers.
The applicant was unable to work for eight months and initially returned only to light duties. She later resumed full duties, though intermittent, low-level symptoms continued. After investigations, she underwent shoulder arthroscopy in May 2009. The surgeon found and removed pronounced subacromial bursitis.
The dispute before the court concerned whether the condition treated in 2009 was caused by the 2003 assault. The applicant’s surgeon considered the later symptoms an exacerbation of the original injury. A medical expert for the Minister considered the bursitis more consistent with an overuse injury, including one associated with the applicant’s recreational swimming, and pointed to a 2008 MRI arthrogram that did not identify bursitis.
The judge accepted that the applicant was a truthful witness and that her complex soft-tissue injuries, including an injury to the left brachial plexus, were not in dispute. On the disputed causation issue, he preferred the evidence of the surgeon who had treated her and found that, on the balance of probabilities, the symptoms and condition investigated and treated later were caused by the assault.
The court said any continuing intermittent, low-level symptoms were expected to improve and resolve. It assessed €50,000 as fair compensation for pain and suffering to date and into the future, and ordered that sum. The judgment did not concern separate, serious injuries the applicant sustained in another incident in 2013.