The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by a child injured at a playground in Longford, upholding the High Court’s dismissal of his negligence claim against Longford Town Council.
Usaman Ahmed was 10 when he fell from a swing at a Longford town playground on 10 May 2009. He fractured his left upper arm and sustained a greenstick fracture of his left forearm. He was represented in the proceedings by his father and next friend, Mohammed Iqbal.
The claim alleged that the swing seat was set 20 millimetres below the recommended standard and that the distance from the seat to the edge of the rubber-matted landing area was about three inches short. Ahmed’s case was that his foot struck the ground as he swung, causing him to fall partly onto a hard divider at the edge of the matting.
The High Court dismissed the claim on liability in 2011. The Supreme Court judgment said the trial judge had found no negligence despite the deviations from the playground standard. In a discussion about costs, the trial judge also said he was not satisfied that a causal connection between the deviations and the accident had been established.
On appeal, the Supreme Court considered whether that conclusion on causation could stand. It noted that Ahmed’s account of how he fell was not rejected, and that both sides had put forward credible expert evidence. The question was whether the trial judge was entitled to prefer evidence consistent with the deviations having made no difference to this accident.
The Court said it was open to the trial judge to conclude that the 20-millimetre difference in seat height had not been shown, on the balance of probabilities, to cause or contribute to the fall. The swing had been in use for about four years, and the evidence did not require a finding that a seat slightly higher would have prevented the accident.
On the matting issue, the Court said evidence about research on playground surfacing and the absence of medical evidence meant the trial judge could conclude that it had not been established that a wider mat would have prevented the injuries or materially changed them.
The Supreme Court did not decide whether the deviations amounted to a breach of the applicable duty of care. It said that issue no longer arose because the finding that causation had not been established was sufficient to dispose of the appeal. It upheld the High Court decision and dismissed the appeal.