The High Court dismissed Graham Hynes’s personal injuries claim against the Governor of Midlands Prison and other State defendants, finding that no accident occurred on the date he relied on: 12 August 2014. The court also found he had not established a breach of duty by the defendants or shown that they destroyed or suppressed evidence. Costs were to follow the usual rule, subject to written submissions within 14 days if either side sought a different order.
The case came before the High Court as a hearing de novo after a Circuit Court order dismissed the claim in October 2021. Hynes alleged he slipped on a butter portion while climbing stairs in Midlands Prison, injuring his right knee and worsening injuries from a serious road traffic accident in 2012. He said he was carrying a tray in one hand and holding the handrail with the other, and that the butter was on the stair.
The judge found Hynes’s account unreliable. It differed from information recorded by his own engineer, including how he carried the tray and which step he struck. The court also considered contemporaneous prison medical records. Entries on 13 August 2014 recorded a fall and right knee pain; a doctor’s note the following day said he had fallen the previous day. The judge found that the fall occurred on 13 August, not 12 August, and said the evidence did not establish that any fall on 13 August resulted from a breach of duty by the defendants.
The judge also found that Hynes had right leg pain and a locking knee before the alleged August fall, contrary to his initial testimony that he had been symptom-free. Medical records from June 2014 documented those symptoms. The court accepted an orthopaedic surgeon’s opinion that Hynes’s ongoing pain was directly related to his 2012 injuries. It found that he had given materially misleading evidence about his symptoms and medical examination, and had exaggerated the effects he attributed to the prison fall.
Hynes’s counsel argued that the absence of CCTV should support inferences in his favour. The court found that no footage of the stairway for 12 August 2014 existed by February 2019, but could not determine whether it had ever existed. It found no evidence of culpable loss or deliberate destruction, and noted that even available footage would not have shown whether butter was on the steps. The court rejected the suggestion that the defendants were “despoilers” of evidence.
The judge also rejected Hynes’s claim that no cleaning took place that day. Evidence from a prison chief officer described a regime of cleaning landings and stairs three times daily. The court found the relevant stairs were probably cleaned after breakfast and before lunch. It dismissed the claim because Hynes had not proved an accident on the pleaded date, negligence causing a fall, or the claimed injuries arising from such an accident.