Injury Compensation News

According to figures recently released by the National Treasury Agency, compensation payments made by the State for personal injury, property damage and clinical negligence claims rose by 46 per cent in 2010.
The amount of compensation paid out by the State last year totalled in excess of 93.2 million Euros; however the total estimated liability on outstanding claims is fast approaching 1 billion Euros.
The massive leap has been attributed to an increase in civil actions for malpractice against hospitals and medical practitioners, which for the first time has become the responsibility of the State Claims Agency rather than the Health Service Executive’s.
Speaking last September, Minister for Health Mary Harney commented on the growing trend of clinical negligence claims, stating that the failure to protect patient safety in hospitals was having economic as well as human consequences. During 2010, the State Claims Agency resolved 1,690 claims, but at the end of the year still had 4,114 claims outstanding.

The Irish Times has revealed new information about the number of children and young adults that died while in the care of the Health Services Executive (HSE) between January 2000 and April 2010, which is now estimated at 199. The 199 figure includes both children in State care or known to social services providers.

Some 109 children died of unnatural causes, which included suicide, drug overdoses, unlawful killings, and traffic accidents. The remaining 90 children died of natural causes, including health problems.

An independent review group has been set up to further investigate the circumstances of the deaths of the children in the care of the state. It is not yet known if the HSE is potentially liable for mistakes that may have been made in the provision of care the the children.

While the focus of news stories and investigations has been the number of child deaths, there has not yet been much focus on the potentially larger problem of injuries sustained by children in care.

The Department of Justice has estimated that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal will award €4.2 million to victims of crime in 2010. The total payments over the past five years are likely to reach €22 million by the end of 2010.

The 2009 statistics show that there were 111 payments in 2009, with the highest award being €867,000. The tribunal makes awards to about half of all applicants.

Glen Turner of Navan, County Meath has won €100,000 damages in settlement of a High Court case against the Ardboyne Hotel, Navan, County Meath for alleged assault by doormen at a nightclub at the hotel.

Mister Turner has claimed that a pre-existing epilepsy condition has “significantly worsened” since he was allegedly assaulted by two doormen. The incident occurred in September 2001.

The High Court case was taken against Quinn Hotels Ltd, with registered offices at Hotel Kilmore, Dublin Road, County Cavan, which operates the Ardboyne’s Hotel. The full details of the settlement were not revealed in court, although legal council for Mr Turner told Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill that the terms included a payment of €100,000.

Shauna Dowdall, then a schoolgirl aged 15, has been awarded €5,000 damages for slander and assault following an incident when she was physically restrained and denied access to the the Luas despite having a valid ticket.
Shauna Dowdall was travelling from the Fatima stop to the city centre and stepped off the tram at the Museum stop to meet a friend before continuing her journey. She was prevented from boarding the tram, causing her stress and embarrassment.
Mr Justice Deery approved a settlement offer of €5,000 damages by Veolia Transport Ireland Limited, to be held in a court account until Shauna is 18 years old.

Mary Maughan, aged 54, of Rathfarnham, County Dublin, and her niece Leonara Myers have been awarded  €20,000 in damages each for defamation of character and false imprisonment after being stopped, detained, and searched at Nutgrove Shopping Centre, Rathfarnham.

The incident occurred on September 1st, 2007 when members of G4S Security Systems stopped Mary Maughan and Leonara Myers in full public view in the shopping centre and accused them of not paying for all the items in their shopping bag.  They were brought them back to Dunnes Stores and detained in a room until the Gardai arrived. The Gardai confirmed that they had receipts for every item in the shopping bags.

The two women said that they were stressed and embarassed by the incident.

In its defence, the security firm stated that they were carrying out Dunnes Stores policy.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal has awarded Pamela McCann of Bellaghy, County Sligo, compensation of over €7,000  “entirely inappropriate” remarks from a male superior at Homebase House and Garden Centre in Santry, Dublin.

Ms McCann had worked for15 months at Homebase before resigning in October 2008, which the court ruled the the resigation was in fact a constructive dismissal becase of the stress caused by the store manager’s sexual comments and fear of being fired. Ms McCann spoke to another manager about the inappropriate behaviour the situation deteriored further and the store manager began ignoring her.
In another incicdent, it was claimed that the store manager’s response to Ms McCann’s pregnancy was to ask her what she “intended to do about it”, implying abortion. It was also claimed that a member of the human resources staff was “quite shocked” by the store manager’s remarks about McCann’s clothes.
The court ruled that  comments were “unwelcome and could reasonably be regarded as sexually offensive, humiliating or intimidating”.
A lesson for any employees is that Ms McCann won her case because she reported the inappropriate behaviour to another manager and discussed it with human resources staff. So the problems were “on the record”. It is also very useful to keep accurate contemporary written notes about every incident, including the exact wording of any comments and the names of any witnesses. It is also appropriate in certain circumstances to rely on CCTV in the workplace (for example, where there is inapporpriate physical contact). However, it is inappopropriate to make illicit recordings of telephone conversations or to take illicit video recordings. In the case of cyber-bullying, any emails or texts or instant messages should be kept as evidence.
The basic steps you should take are:

• Keep accurate records about all incidents
• Do not respond in any way to provocation
• Speak to a solicitor
• Report incidents to human resources or more senior management

Employers and their employees have duties by law that your solicitor will explain to you.

The European Commission is relaunching the debate about class action suits (also called collective redress) for faulty product in the European Union with the objective of developing common standards across the 27 member countries. Three EU commissioners, justice commissioner Viviane Reding, competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia and consumer commissioner John Dalli, have drafted a paper on the subject and will be launching public consultations in November.

The Financial TImes has today revealed some of the issues covered in the briefing paper, including making class actions cheaper than individual claims, financing class action suits, consensual resolutions through mediation, enforcing judgements throughout the EU, and avoiding abusive litigation.

A previous attempt to introduce EU-wide rules failed due to strong lobbying by business groups worried about potential costs.

As with other EU countries, current legislation in Ireland makes it very difficult to pursue class action suits.

The Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has blamed carelessness in the Health Service Executive (HSE)  eight-year delay in processing an elderly woman’s application for a public long-term care bed. The elderly woman’s GP first applied without success for a public long-term care bed for her in 1995. It took additional applications and the intervention of the Ombudsman to obtain a public bed in 2004 just before she passed away. In the meantime, the woman was housed in a private nursing home with the fees paid in part by her state pension and a means-tested nursing-home subvention and the balance paid by her son.  Her son built up debts to pay for his mother’s private nursing home.

The Ombudsman found that it was simple carelessness that caused the original application to be ignored, rather than anything more serious. The Ombudsman ruled that be compensation of €56,500 should be paid.

The HSE has explained that human error led to the delays and has resolved the particular case.

Controller and Auditor General has revealed that payments made under the Garda Siochana Compensation Acts for injury compensation claims amounted to 12 million euro in 2009. The highest award to a Garda was €132,000.  Civilians injuried in accidents on Garda premises are entitled to receive compensation under the act and six civilians shared compensation of €48,000. The Controller and Auditor General has also reported that compensation and legal costs of over €3m were paid out in 2009 for accidents involving grada squad cars. The payments were made for 280 cases that resulted from 532 accidents, with payments ranging from €2 to €250,000.  Prisoners and civilians visiting prisons are entitled to compensation. Prison staff injured while on duty received €682,000, with the highest payment being €73,000. Some 83 prisoners received compensation for injuries while an seemingly very high number of civilians – 26 – were hurt while visiting jails and claimed compensation.