The High Court awarded bus passenger Jennifer Quaid €125,000 in general damages after finding that a Bus Éireann driver’s failure to see an approaching car created an avoidable emergency and caused her back injury. The court also awarded €1,550 in agreed special damages.
The judgment was delivered by Ms Justice Egan on 23 February 2022. The case concerned an incident on 19 March 2014, when Ms Quaid was travelling with her mother on a bus from Limerick city centre towards O’Malley Park.
The bus approached a stop-controlled junction at Carew Park and Roxboro Road, intending to turn right. CCTV showed it slowing to a crawl at the junction mouth, then moving across the near lane towards the centre line. The driver braked as the bus crossed the line, when an approaching car was close. The car swerved to avoid the bus.
Ms Quaid alleged that the driver had been counting coins rather than watching the road. The judge rejected that account, relying on the CCTV and the driver’s evidence. She found, however, that the driver failed to observe the car until it was almost too late. The judge said the bus had crossed into the path of traffic that should have been visible and that the resulting emergency was of the defendant’s own making. She found Bus Éireann had breached its duty of care. No contributory negligence was alleged against Ms Quaid.
The defendant accepted that heavier-than-normal braking had been applied, but disputed that the incident could have caused her claimed injury. Engineers disagreed about the braking force. The judge did not find that a full emergency “slam” had been applied, but concluded that there had been very abrupt deceleration.
Ms Quaid reported back pain the day after the incident and later underwent extensive treatment, including an L4/L5 discectomy in May 2017. Her specialists considered that the braking had made a previously largely asymptomatic degenerative disc condition symptomatic. The defendant’s orthopaedic expert agreed that the most likely explanation was that an acute event had triggered symptoms in a pre-existing disc condition. The judge accepted the medical evidence linking the incident to Ms Quaid’s ongoing back and leg symptoms.
The court awarded €75,000 for general damages to date and €50,000 for future general damages. The judgment said Ms Quaid was likely to continue experiencing pain and require medication and potentially further pain-management treatment. The total award was €126,550, including the agreed special damages.