The High Court dismissed Mary Behan’s personal injury claim against Allied Irish Banks PLC, finding no evidence that the bank was negligent in relation to her fall at work in June 2006. The court concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that a canvas money bag she was handling was on the floor and that she was responsible for keeping her work area clear.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Roderick Murphy on 18 December 2009, concerned an incident in the bank’s secure off-counter office in Westport. Ms Behan, a bank official, alleged that the area was congested and cluttered and that a bag caught in her chair’s castor, causing her to fall and injure her right knee. The bank denied liability and argued that she was responsible for the condition of the area.
Ms Behan gave evidence that she was about to stand when a bag caught in the chair’s castor, and that she struck her knee on a partly open drawer. The court also considered a same-day incident report completed by the bank’s human resources witness. It recorded that a coin bag caught in the castors as Ms Behan turned on the chair. The judge treated the report and the evidence about the floor as the strongest account of the incident.
An engineer called for Ms Behan said that objects left on the floor could create a hazard and snag a chair castor. The bank’s engineer considered the room’s usable space reasonable and said an overflowing basket should have been removed by the porter. The judge found that the room’s size had not been shown to contribute to the fall. He accepted evidence that the porter was available to move baskets when asked and that Ms Behan was the senior official in the room, responsible for her work area. The court found no evidence of negligence, breach of duty or breach of statutory duty by the bank.
The bank had also applied to have the claim dismissed under section 26 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, relying on omissions in Ms Behan’s reply to a question about prior or subsequent medical conditions and treatments. The judge found the reply incomplete and, to that extent, misleading, and said the non-disclosure could affect her credibility. However, he was not satisfied that she knowingly gave false or misleading evidence or knew that her verified reply was misleading. The section 26 application therefore did not provide grounds to dismiss the claim.
The judge said that other incidents and medical history made it difficult for specialists to isolate the injury attributable to the June 2006 fall. He dismissed the claim on the separate ground that the evidence did not establish the bank’s liability.