The High Court dismissed Corinne Donnelly’s personal injury claim against Dunnes Stores, overturning a Circuit Court award after finding the evidence did not establish that work pressure caused her accident.
Mr Justice Twomey’s judgment, delivered on 8 May 2019, concerned a Circuit Court award of €31,385 to Ms Donnelly, comprising €19,000 in general damages and €12,385 in special damages. She was injured while unpacking T-shirts at the company’s Harvey’s Quay premises in Limerick. As she reached into a cardboard box, her eye came into contact with a flap, bruising her cornea. She attended hospital as an outpatient and had, the judgment said, recovered for practical purposes within a week.
Ms Donnelly argued that understaffing and an excessive workload had put her under pressure, leading to the accident. She said she had raised work stress with managers, but the managers denied this in their evidence. The court said the evidence of understaffing and pressure consisted of Ms Donnelly’s assertions; no additional evidence, such as a comparison of shop turnover and staffing levels, was provided.
An engineer retained for Ms Donnelly gave an opinion that management should have responded to complaints and that an excessive workload had put her at risk. The judge said the engineer had moved from her account of pressure to a conclusion that the employer was likely negligent without supporting evidence. Applying common-sense principles to what he described as a routine task, the judge found the evidence did not show, on the balance of probabilities, that workplace pressure was the legal cause of the accident. He also concluded that any inadvertence in carrying out the task was not the employer’s fault.
The judgment addressed the Circuit Court’s earlier order requiring Dunnes Stores to pay €20,000 from the award if it wished to appeal. Referring to Court of Appeal decisions issued after that order, the judge concluded that a trial court should not order payment of damages while liability is being appealed, except in special circumstances. He said the part-payment order should not have been made, while acknowledging that the Circuit Court decision predated those appellate judgments.
The High Court dismissed Ms Donnelly’s claim and concluded that the Circuit Court should not have ordered the €20,000 payment. The judgment does not state whether that sum had already been paid.