The High Court awarded Padraig Cull €80,000 in damages for injuries sustained when he fell from a ladder at a Dublin building site in October 2003. Mr Justice de Valera found John Paul Construction Limited liable, with no contributory negligence on Mr Cull’s part. He found no liability against the second defendant, Oakley Formwork, which employed Mr Cull.
The fall happened while Mr Cull was dismantling shuttering panels at 67 Inchicore Road. The parties agreed that he fell from a ladder at a site under John Paul Construction’s control. They disputed how it happened.
Mr Cull said a panel he had freed swung into him and knocked him from the ladder. His assistant, Patrick Breslin, supported that account. The defendants’ account, supported by witnesses Keith Phelan and Stephen Kennedy, was that Mr Cull removed clamps without warning the crane operator or banksman and without ensuring the panel was secured by the crane.
The judge said all four eyewitnesses gave credible evidence, but their accounts differed sharply. He considered the ladder’s position central to deciding what happened. After weighing the evidence, he found it improbable that Mr Cull used the shorter ladder described by the defence or removed all the clamps from a central position. He considered it more probable that Mr Cull had moved to the left side of the assembly to reach the clamps. On that basis, he accepted Mr Cull and Mr Breslin’s account of the panel striking him and the ladder.
The judge also found that laying the shuttering assembly horizontally on the ground was not practical at that site, although it would have been the preferred method. He concluded that liability rested with John Paul Construction and that none rested with Oakley Formwork.
Mr Cull suffered soft tissue back injuries, which the judge described as an exacerbation of a previously dormant degenerative condition, and an injury to his right shoulder. He could no longer work as a shuttering carpenter but had obtained lighter work at reduced earnings. The judge said there was no proper evidence to quantify future earnings loss, but included an unquantified labour-market loss-of-opportunity element in general damages.
The award comprised €30,000 for pain and suffering to date, €40,000 for future pain and suffering and €10,000 in agreed special damages, totalling €80,000.