The High Court awarded Michael Doyle €91,881 in damages after finding that a 2013 road traffic accident caused a lumbar disc injury that led to surgery. The award comprised €45,000 for pain and suffering to date, €40,000 for future pain and suffering and disablement, and €6,881 in agreed special damages.
The case was heard as an assessment of damages after liability had been conceded. Mr Justice Barr delivered judgment on 27 January 2017. The court found that the plaintiff, a front seat passenger in a stationary vehicle, was injured when the defendants’ vehicle struck it from behind on Chancery Lane, Dublin, on 15 May 2013.
The court accepted that the collision caused a minor injury to the plaintiff’s right middle finger, a soft tissue injury to his neck superimposed on pre-existing degenerative changes, and a lower back injury involving extrusion of part of the L4-5 disc. It found that the resulting sciatica was relieved by a microdiscectomy in January 2016, but that the operation did not end his back pain. The judgment records continuing daily back and neck pain.
The central dispute was whether the lower back condition resulted from the accident or from degenerative changes. The plaintiff’s medical experts, orthopaedic surgeon Mr Bough and neurosurgeon Mr Young, attributed the disc extrusion to trauma. The defendants’ expert, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Kapoor, considered the symptoms to reflect progression of degenerative disc disease.
The court preferred the evidence of Mr Bough and Mr Young. It accepted Mr Young’s view that disc extrusion was almost certainly caused by trauma and found that the plaintiff probably ruptured disc fibres in the collision. The judge also relied on the plaintiff’s evidence that he had no back pain before the accident, his age, and the onset of symptoms in the weeks afterwards.
The judgment says the plaintiff remained in pain despite surgery and would need to be “back conscious”, avoiding heavy lifting and pulling or dragging movements. He was effectively self-employed and had not lost earnings or missed work because he could regulate his hours. The court’s decision assessed damages; liability had already been conceded.