The High Court awarded €300,000 in damages to a student who suffered a serious head injury when a local authority lorry’s wing mirror struck him as he waited to cross a road in Waterford.
In a judgment delivered on 15 November 2012, Mr Justice O’Neill found that the lorry driver failed to keep a proper lookout and manoeuvred too close to the kerb. Waterford City Council, which owned the lorry and employed the driver, was vicariously liable. The judge found no contributory negligence by the plaintiff.
The accident happened on Paddy Browne Road, beside an entrance to Waterford Institute of Technology, on the morning of 26 October 2007. The plaintiff, who was studying architectural technology, had no memory of the accident. The judge inferred from the evidence that he had gone to the pedestrian crossing and was waiting at or near the kerb for the lights to change.
The defendants disputed how the impact occurred. They accepted that the plaintiff was injured in contact with the lorry, but argued that he had walked or run into a metal upright at the rear of the vehicle. The judge rejected that account, describing it as highly improbable given the absence of injuries to the plaintiff’s torso or legs. He accepted the plaintiff’s engineering evidence that the injuries and the position where he was found on the road were consistent with a blow from the wing mirror.
The judge also found that other traffic was on the road, contrary to the driver’s emphatic denial. He concluded that the driver probably manoeuvred close to the kerb in response to oncoming traffic, bringing the passenger-side mirror over the kerb and into the plaintiff’s head.
The plaintiff sustained fractures to his face and skull, dental damage and an organic brain injury. The judgment said he recovered close to normal cognitive functioning, but continued to have memory and concentration difficulties, impaired smell and taste, scarring, behavioural effects and a lasting problem with his right eye. The judge found some vocational disadvantage but was not satisfied that a separate award on another basis was justified.
The award comprised €100,000 for pain and suffering to the date of judgment, €100,000 for future pain and suffering, €50,000 for vocational disadvantage and €50,000 in agreed special damages.