High Court of Ireland Decisions

1. This is an assessment of damages for personal injuries arising from a motorcar collision on December 8th, 1992 at Roxboro Road, Limerick. On that occasion the Defendant's car collided with the rear of a car driven by the Plaintiff causing personal injuries to her.

2. It is an admitted fact that no damage was done to the rear of the Plaintiff's car in the said accident. Damage to the extent of £400 was done to the Defendant's car, caused in part, by the fact that the Plaintiff's car had a tow-bar projecting from the rear thereof.

3. The Plaintiff is a married woman. She was born in 1957 and at the date of the accident was about 37 years of age. On leaving school, having passed the Leaving Certificate, she entered the Civil Service and at the time of the accident was a Community Welfare Officer in Limerick dealing mainly with the O'Malley Park area of Limerick City in which there would be a great deal of unemployment and a great deal of social deprivation.

4. She married and now has two children aged 9 and 6 respectively. She presently lives with her husband and children at Castlecreen, Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare.

5. The nature of her work at the date of the accident would have been interviewing 20 to 30 members of the public in the course of a working day. In addition, she would probably do several home visits in the course of the same day. This latter aspect of her work would have involved a substantial degree of driving. When not engaged in those activities, she would spend a great deal of her time on computers and doing administrative type work. The Plaintiff's case is that prior to the date of accident she was an active and energetic person coping with a very substantial volume of work in her capacity as a Welfare Officer and also coping with her domestic and family commitments. In the course of the years before the accident she had hardly ever been off work for illness, save and except on maternity leave. Indeed, even since the accident her absence from work was quite limited, namely, four weeks in the period next succeeding the date of accident, a period of two weeks in late August/early September 1995 and three weeks in February 1996. Apart from the said consecutive periods of absence she had a total of 12/13 or 14 days of intermittent absenteeism in the course of the said period. Her superior gave evidence that she was an extremely hard working and very diligent person.

6. In evidence, she described how her car was hit from the rear. Her phrase was "a devastating impact - jolting her forward". She says that in the immediate aftermath, she felt totally disorientated when she got out of the car and had a great sense of imbalance. She went home and later that evening pain and stiffness developed and got progressively worse in the course of the evening. The pain was over the right shoulder and in her back. She went to her G.P. within two hours of the accident and he notes that she was complaining of a frontal headache, right shoulder and right neck pain with very restricted movements on the right side of her neck and stiffness and that she was complaining of a wobbly shaky feeling.

7. She was off work as I have already said for a period of four weeks at that time. On her return she described how she worked as best she could, whilst suffering a very substantial degree of pain. She said her condition became worse, and by six months after the accident she remembered coming home from work exhausted with a pain in her back and neck and deeply fatigued. She said the pain was "unbearable". She described how she was obliged to continue work and cope with her domestic scene though somewhere about this time she got domestic help. She said the pain was affecting her work and her situation at home. She described herself as being very agitated and very contrary at home. She felt quite miserable and all her social activities virtually came to an end.

8. In 1995 she succeeded in negotiating a transfer from the Southill/O'Malley Park area of Limerick to Shannon. This in fact would have resulted in her being much closer to home and in principle would be a less stressful scene of operations. She still had to drive to work and drive in the course of her duties and she said this driving set off pain in her back and stiffness in her neck. She again complained that by 4 o'clock in the evening, fatigue and pain in her neck would have become unbearable and that even when she went home it would go on and sometimes get worse. She went on to complain of having difficulty in lifting her children and although she had full-time house help she found it difficult to carry on in the domestic scene. Since September 1996 she has been on a job sharing arrangement, one week on and one week off and this has considerably relieved her problem though she still has a great degree of pain and finds it very difficult to carry on. In summary she presented a case that suggested that in fact she was worse now than four and a half years ago when the accident happened.

9. The Defence in cross-examination fairly and squarely put it to her that:-

10. She acknowledged that she did go out with her children and that she did shopping and from time to time did go out now and then but that all pleasure of social activities had virtually departed. She denied that she was exaggerating and said she was in pain.

11. In support of her claim, her General Practitioner, Dr. Kieran Hughes, gave evidence confirming that she attended him shortly after the accident complaining of pain in her neck and that on physical examination there was tenderness on left lateral rotation and left lateral flexion of her neck restricted forward flexion and a tight feeling and pain in the posterior neck area. He concluded that there was a musculo-ligamentous injury to her neck. He prescribed pain killers, rest and physiotherapy. Some short time thereafter he referred her to the care of Mr. John Mangan, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Galway. He has seen her on some nine occasions since that and her complaints were always somewhat the same, very troublesome pain in her neck and right shoulder, sensation of pins and needles and fatigue. She said she never had an interval free from some symptoms.

12. On physical examination at the outset, she had 30% of normal neck movement and this had now become relatively normal neck movement though in April 1997 she complained bitterly of right sided neck movements. Any complaint in relation to her lower back had reduced over the years though she still had some persistent ache. By reason of the length of which these symptoms had continued, he was guarded in his prognosis.

13. She saw Mr. Mangan on ten or eleven occasions. On these occasions her symptoms varied and the pain in her neck was sometimes bad and sometimes not so bad. The ache in her back tended to free out when she was moving, but driving or sitting for a long time would increase the pain as would standing for a long period. He reports her on occasion as using phrases "in agony" in relation to her neck. He found on an M.R.I. scan in August 1993 a small posterior bulge at C5/C6 disc. He said that this bulge is indenting the thecal sac but was not abutting the spinal cord. There was no evidence of narrowing of the nerve root canals and there was no evidence of nerve root compression. He claimed he considered at that time that it was probably a normal anatomical variation of no significance. He thought however that the neck injury did involve this intervertebral disc and had rendered it painful but that in time it would clear up though pain would tend to wax and wane and she would be likely to have some degree of neck ache for the future and initially he certainly was of the view that it would recover.

14. In January 1997 she claimed that she was "desperate". She had now gone on to part-time work, the desperate was in fact related to her neck and to pain at the rear of her head and that she felt worse now than had been in the past. He concluded that she had sustained a soft tissue injury to her neck, that there was evidence of degeneration of the cervical spine on the most recent M.R.I. scan which appeared to have progressed since the scan in 1993 and that that pain and pain in the upper limbs would persist indefinitely varying from severity from time to time and that she would have to be careful about her neck indefinitely. He did not think that surgical treatment was likely.

15. This view of her condition was contested by the doctors who examined her for the Defence. Mr. Michael Peegam was of opinion that she probably sustained sprains (soft tissue injuries, whiplash injuries of the neck and low back). He felt that the M.R.I. finding was of doubtful significance and that the bulge was not traumatic in origin and were not unusual in a person of her age. He felt that the pain in her back would settle down and should have settled down already. He felt that the disc lesion, which as I have said is not in his view traumatic in origin was not in any way worsened by the soft tissue injury sustained in the accident. Dr. M.A. Daly, Consultant Radiologist, gave trenchant evidence that there was no bony injury at all. There was a mild scoliosis which was present for a long time and the lumbar spine and lumbar disc spaces were otherwise normal and x-rays of her cervical spine showed no abnormality and there was no osteophyte formation. The M.R.I. scan showed a bulge at C5/6. This was not compressing the thecal sac or spinal cord and there was no evidence of it interfering with the exiting nerves at this level. There was nothing unusual in a woman of her age having this defect without any traumatic origin. To sum up, the Defence medical evidence concluded that she had suffered moderate soft tissue injury which would clear up though it apparently had not cleared up to date and that they could find no good reason for the complaints of pain in her lumbar back.

16. In the witness box the Plaintiff was a good and forthright witness. She conveyed to me that she was a person who would be active and conscientious in the performance of her duties. The other side of her character was that she was a tense person and who, in my view, would have been affected by stress. She had a fine sense of her own rights and entitlements. She was a person who would ensure that she enjoyed all her rights and in the event of injury, be compensated in full for the injury, as she perceived it and described it.

17. The phraseology she used in describing her condition were certainly not diminutive of anything that she was suffering at any time. In my opinion, objectively, she could be said to be exaggerating but in the context of the type of person she was she may well have been extremely frustrated by the degree of ache and general distress which flowed from her injuries when she compared her present day state to the state she enjoyed before the accident. I accept the Defendant's medical evidence that the bulge in the disc is not traumatic in origin and pre-existed the accident. It may be that the general soft tissue injury which is local in character may have excited local pain but the medical evidence is clear that there is no nerve root involvement and the pain is not radicular. I am also satisfied that in time it will substantively recover though she will have to be careful in relation to activities involving her neck and may suffer from time to time a degree of distress.

18. Turning to the question of damages. She has suffered for a period of four and a half years, distress, pain and ache varying from quite substantial at the outset to continuous aching after activity which has genuinely interfered with her enjoyment of life. In my opinion this warrants compensation for this period for general damages in the sum of £20,000.00. To which is to be added to such sum as has been agreed as special damages to date, namely, £2,700.00.

19. Turning to the future, I think a sum of £12,000.00 would be reasonable compensation for any distress which could be attributed either to the injuries actually sustained in the accident or to any exacerbation of pain resulting from the pre-existent condition of her cervical spine. I have no doubt that nothing in her injuries sustained in the accident should preclude her from doing her ordinary work on a full-time basis within a year from now and certainly not after a period of two years. It follows from that that she is entitled:-