The High Court awarded Attracta Lennox €57,500 in general damages for pain and suffering caused by a 2012 road collision in Dublin, while finding that a later disc prolapse and related losses were not caused by the crash.
Ms Lennox’s action against the driver, Clare O’Callaghan, and car owner, Aoife Cox, proceeded as an assessment of damages after they admitted negligence. The action against the Motor Insurers’ Bureau of Ireland had been discontinued. Mr Justice Keane delivered judgment on 20 December 2018.
The collision happened on Ballinteer Road, near the entrance to Delbrook Park, on 20 July 2012. Ms Lennox’s stopped car was struck from behind and pushed into the vehicle ahead. The judge accepted that the crash caused soft tissue injuries and a sacroiliac strain, with continuing pain and some likely need to modify work and leisure activities.
The central dispute was whether a serious disc prolapse, identified in 2015 after new left leg pain began, resulted from the collision or from degeneration. The plaintiff’s neurosurgeon attributed the disc damage to the crash. The defendants’ medical experts considered the later prolapse unrelated and consistent with degenerative change. The judge preferred the preponderance of the expert evidence and found, on the balance of probabilities, that the prolapse was caused by ongoing degeneration that the accident neither triggered nor worsened.
The court also rejected the claim that Ms Lennox had suffered psychiatric injury caused by the crash, noting that the serious decline in her mood began when the slipped disc became painful in 2015. It found she had not established past or future loss of earnings attributable to the accident. The judge said the defendants were not liable for earnings losses arising from the disc prolapse or spinal degeneration.
The special damages schedule must be amended to remove costs linked to the disc condition and its treatment. The parties were asked to try to agree a revised schedule, including corrected figures for the husband’s claimed earnings loss. The judge allowed mileage at €1 per mile, despite accepting an objection to that rate, because no alternative had been proposed.
The €57,500 general damages award covers non-pecuniary loss, including pain and suffering to date and into the future. The judgment did not finalise the overall damages award: special damages remained to be revised and the appropriate total settled.