The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by Paul Doyle and ordered a retrial of the liability issue arising from a 2000 motorcycle collision in Kilrane, Co Wexford. It did not determine liability itself or find that Catherine O’Rourke was negligent.
Mr Doyle was left paraplegic after his motorcycle crossed onto the wrong side of the road and collided with an oncoming car. He had been travelling behind Ms O’Rourke’s car. At trial, he argued that she braked suddenly near a junction, causing him to lose control. Ms O’Rourke said she had signalled and slowed to turn left, and that Mr Doyle came out from behind her car as she made the turn. Mr Doyle accepted on appeal that he had been following too closely and that the oncoming driver, Ms Caroline Doyle, was blameless.
The liability issue was tried first. In 2009, the trial judge, Lavan J., found that negligence by Ms O’Rourke had not been established, relying substantially on credibility findings. Mr Doyle appealed that decision.
Giving judgment on 1 May 2012, Mr Justice Clarke said the trial judge had made two errors on significant matters. First, the trial judge said he accepted in full the evidence of Ms Caroline Doyle and an independent witness, Pierce Walsh, although their accounts differed on whether Ms Doyle’s car was nearly stopped at impact or continued moving and dragged Mr Doyle some 20 to 30 feet. The Supreme Court said that distinction mattered to the competing explanations of where the collision sequence began.
Second, the trial judge had treated the delay in bringing the claim as an adverse factor against Mr Doyle’s credibility. The first contact Ms O’Rourke received about a possible claim came more than two years after the accident. The Supreme Court held that, under the principle in *Mannix v Pluck*, the delay could not support an inference about the perceived strength of Mr Doyle’s case. It also said the trial judge had not adequately examined Mr Doyle’s explanation, which included his rehabilitation and an earlier solicitor’s failure, for the lack of an earlier complaint.
The court concluded that both errors concerned matters significant to the narrow factual dispute. It rejected the argument that a retrial was pointless, while stressing that it was not clear that Mr Doyle would succeed even without the errors. The order was for a retrial of liability between Mr Doyle and Ms O’Rourke; the Supreme Court did not resolve the accident’s cause or liability.