The High Court has dismissed a negligence claim by a former student who fractured his left elbow after falling during a PE class at a school in Kilmuckridge, County Wexford, in January 2015.
In a judgment delivered on 16 June 2023, Ms Justice Bolger found that the plaintiff had not established negligence or an actionable lack of care in the organisation of the class. The central dispute was how a relay race had been arranged and whether the running route brought students dangerously close to the gym wall.
The plaintiff said students chose opponents and sprinted towards the wall after turning at cones in the middle of the hall. He said he collided with another student, continued running and fell near the wall. The defendant disputed that account. PE teacher Colin Breen said he had divided the class into three teams, with cones marking a route that ended several metres from the wall. He recalled the plaintiff losing his balance near a turn cone, stumbling and eventually falling against the wall.
The court heard that the plaintiff was 15 at the time. He said he had also lost consciousness, which the defendant did not accept. A&E notes from the evening of the accident recorded a loss of consciousness “for a few seconds” and a small abrasion on his forehead. The judge accepted that the record corroborated a head injury and a brief loss of consciousness, but found a classmate’s later account of 20 to 30 seconds unconscious was unreliable.
The judge gave no weight to evidence from the defendant’s PE expert, Dr Moles. She criticised the expert’s comments supporting the defendant’s position and her opinion on loss of consciousness, which she accepted was outside her professional competence. The judge said the expert’s report raised concerns about her understanding of her duty to the court. She rejected the plaintiff’s submission that the expert’s approach also undermined Breen’s credibility, finding him reliable and consistent.
The judge said the expert witnesses agreed that the plaintiff’s version of the exercise would have created a foreseeable safety risk, while the arrangement described by Breen was safe. She preferred Breen’s account, citing his explanation of the layout, the contemporaneous incident form he completed four days later and the medical record’s description of the plaintiff losing his footing.
On that version of events, the judge found Breen was not required to give a specific instruction not to run into the wall, because the route’s end point was set a distance away from it. The claim was dismissed. The judgment does not state an award of damages or make any further order.