Tort
Car Accident (Gotcha?)
The Defendant driver admitted he did not see the Plaintiff pedestrian. The Plaintiff was an admirable witness, given that he was thrown into the air by the Defendant’s taxi. The Defendant gave evidence of the Plaintiff’s head hitting his windscreen. The judgment does not record the Plaintiff’s evidence in detail on the point, but if it was tendered it would probably have been in terms of the Defendant’s windscreen hitting him on the head.
Accident statistics (Wrong Number)
I imagine the reason for this is the tendency for failures to detect bone damage in x-rays to come to light by the pathetic return of the patient to the hospital with exacerbated injuries from neglect of the original injury.
Injury, accident, instructions (You said what?)
The mother claimed that the time within which the Plaintiff could effectively and successfully issue proceedings against her had long since expired. The Supreme Court agreed with her. It found that the Plaintiff could not avail of the provisions of the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act 1991 in circumstances where not only could he easily find out the relevant facts (that the mother was the only occupier) but that he actually knew this when he instructed his solicitor (and failed to tell him).
I Misspoke Myself
We are all of us guilty, at some time or other, of doing this. We have firm clear recollections of where we left the keys, the hand blender, the tea-bags, the car insurance etc. We were wrong. Nevertheless, we conveyed (even propagated) the wrong information to someone else. Errors of this kind are common. Significantly, being wrong is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Bloodhounds
The fact that the auditors in that case escaped by the skin of their teeth shows life is going to get difficult for the profession.
Disclaimer!
Of course, what Eoin O’Dell is too courteous to point out is that it is not an attractive human feature to try to avoid paying, or properly paying, for a service, but that is a vain complaint in the knowledge that some people contract, through the internet, with anonymous suppliers of drugs…
Strict Liability?
Many claims against employers can and will fail when the claim is made as one of negligence by the employer. However, because of the multitude of duties imposed on employers by statute, it is common for the employer to be found liable to the employee for an injury even where the employer has not been “at fault” (meaning, here, “negligent”).
Barmy
The Minister’s proposal is not suitable for legislation; it is suitable for a proclamation. He is, in effect, proposing to issue a call to arms, directed to the Nation, enjoining the citizens to embrace goodness and to avoid evil.
Human Rights
n Guerra v Italy (1998) 26 EHRR 357, toxic emissions from a factory injured many nearby residents and killed some. The ECtHR found that the absence of information on the effects of living near the factory breached the Applicants’ right to respect for home under Article 8 of the Convention.
Slip and Fall in snow and ice
It is settled law in Ireland that a public authority is not liable for damage arising from “non-feasance”. This means that, if the public authority fails to exercise a statutory power, and loss is sustained which would have been avoided if the power had been exercised, the public authority is not accountable in law for that failure.