The High Court awarded Patrick McCahey €67,500 in damages after he was injured when a car struck him while he was cycling in Carrickmacross. The court found he was entitled to recover from the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland (MIBI), while stressing that suspicion about a locally known driver did not establish that the driver caused the accident.
Mr Justice Birmingham’s judgment, delivered on 15 July 2009, concerned an accident on Chapel Street on 1 April 2006. Mr McCahey, then 65 and retired, said a car pulled out from a parked position and hit him, causing him to fall and break his leg. He said the driver and owner remained untraced, and brought proceedings against MIBI under its agreement with the Minister for the Environment.
The MIBI denied liability and pleaded that the accident was caused or contributed to by an identified motorist, referred to in the judgment as John Doe. Mr McCahey said he had written what he believed was the registration number on a Lemsip carton after the collision. A Garda statement taken about a month later recorded a silver car and a registration number. Gardaí traced the vehicle to a locally based man who said he was its usual driver; the car was registered and insured in his wife’s name. He denied recalling any collision, though a later statement recalled seeing a man stopped on a bicycle after the incident.
The Gardaí decided there was insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution. Mr Justice Birmingham said that decision did not determine whether civil proceedings against the man or his wife were justified, given the higher burden of proof required in a criminal case. He considered the plaintiff’s evidence unimpressive, describing him as evasive and obstructive, but rejected the suggestion that he had deliberately kept the man’s identity out of the case. The judgment said the evidence cast “a cloud of suspicion” over the couple, but did not go beyond that.
The judge noted that the MIBI could have required Mr McCahey to take reasonable steps against anyone from whom he might have a remedy under the 2004 agreement, with an indemnity for reasonable costs. It made no such requirement. The plaintiff and his advisers were therefore entitled to decide they lacked enough evidence to sue the couple. The risk of that choice was that the claim against MIBI would fail if responsibility by the couple were established on the balance of probabilities; the judge found that had not happened.
On damages, the court recorded fractures to the right tibia and three metatarsals, a short hospital stay and treatment in a cast. Mr McCahey continued to report pain, walked with a slight limp and had difficulty walking distances. The judge awarded €30,000 for past general damages and €37,500 for future damages, totalling €67,500.