The High Court has awarded €76,225 to a hospital worker who injured her back when she slipped on a wet kitchen floor at St Patrick’s Hospital in Cashel. The court found that the Health Service Executive had failed to address a foreseeable workplace hazard, but rejected the worker’s claim that she could no longer do her job and disallowed her claims for lost earnings and college costs.
The plaintiff, who worked as a multi task attendant, fell on 4 January 2011 while carrying a dirty cup into the kitchen serving the hospital’s rehabilitation ward. She said there was water on the floor. Mr Justice Noonan found that the floor was wet with soapy dishwater and moderately slippery. Trays of rinsed crockery were moved to the dishwasher as many as 40 times a day, making wet floors in the area virtually inevitable without constant vigilance, he said.
The judge found that the HSE knew of the risk and had failed to put up a warning sign and dry the floor in time. He accepted evidence that statutory duties had been breached and found no contributory negligence by the plaintiff. Although she had alleged that oversized dishwasher trays caused drips, the judge considered her mistaken about the trays’ size; he said a tray could sometimes have overhung the counter.
The HSE argued that the claim should be dismissed because the plaintiff’s account was undermined by her pre-accident back complaints, her gym activities after the fall and the way she presented her injuries. The judge accepted that her replies about earlier back pain were misleading to some degree, including that she had not disclosed an episode of sciatica in 2007. But he found she had not deliberately set out to deceive the court and had not exaggerated her injuries to the point of fraud. He refused the HSE’s application for a non-suit at the close of the plaintiff’s case and later rejected its submission that the claim was too tainted by lies to succeed. The HSE had not applied under section 26 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004.
The court accepted medical evidence that the fall caused an L2/3 disc protrusion and an injury to the L5/S1 disc, resulting in back and leg pain. However, the plaintiff had returned to work after about 10 weeks and worked for another year. The judge found she had not proved she was unable to resume her former employment. He also found that she had not established that her later depression was caused by the accident.
The award comprised €50,000 for general damages to the date of judgment, €25,000 for future general damages, €400 for the MRI scan and €825 for travel. The court disallowed medical treatment fees that had not been satisfactorily explained, along with claims for lost earnings and college tuition. The judgment was delivered on 9 December 2014.