The High Court has dismissed Denise Best’s personal injuries claim against South Dublin County Council after finding she had not proved that a cracked footpath caused her fall in Firhouse in 2018.
Mr Justice Mícheál O’Higgins said Ms Best gave honest and credible evidence and had suffered genuine injuries. But he was not satisfied that she had established that the damaged footpath outside 45 and 47 Daletree Avenue was the location and cause of her accident.
Ms Best said she fell while walking home with her husband and two neighbours in the early hours of 25 August 2018. Her engineer described a hole about six inches across and one inch deep in the footpath, which he attributed to roots from a nearby lime tree. He considered it a tripping hazard, particularly in darkness.
The judge identified gaps in the evidence about the precise location and cause of the fall. Ms Best had not seen the crack before or after falling, and no other member of her group gave evidence. The court was also left uncertain about how her husband identified the damaged section the following day and about the ambulance call-out location, recorded as 43 Daletree Avenue rather than the addresses beside the crack.
The judge also considered the paramedic’s note that Ms Best had fallen after slipping on a kerb. He accepted that a hospital triage note might have repeated the paramedic’s account, but said that did not resolve the uncertainty raised by the ambulance record. He said the absence of any evidence linking the fall to the crack on the night was a significant difficulty.
The Council denied liability, arguing that the alleged failure to repair a footpath defect was non-feasance: an omission to repair a defect it had not created. Ms Best argued that tree roots were outside the statutory definition of a road and that the Council’s control of the area and stated responsibility for public trees could give rise to a duty of care.
The court did not decide those wider legal questions. Although the case had been presented as a test case, the judge said it was inappropriate to give an advisory ruling after Ms Best’s claim had failed on factual liability. He held that the claim should be dismissed and said the wider issues would have to await a more suitable case.