Crazy Court Awards

onedmc

So I see there is another award of €91k personal injury for slipping after consuming 5 beers on a floor that the hotel claims was not wet.  

Court upholds €91k personal injury award to woman who slipped and fell on wedding dancefloor (msn.com)

Is there any way to stop this insanity? It's costing all of us a fortune. I can't see why any award greater than the loss of income should be awarded.

Should we Tax it as income, or even legislate to get rid of all financial damages. Only allow criminal negligence so the hotel owner and employees who didn't do the job get prosecuted? Basically harder to prove except in really serious cases.

Peregrinus

Why do you think this is insane? Do you know whether the floor was wet or not?

con747

Where does the likes of this fit in https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/arid-41264374.html Not a court award but if it was a personal injury she was claiming for and was justified why withdraw it and sue the newspaper. A good payday either way.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121339962#Comment_121339962

As anyone who was alive and sentient at the time will recall, Bailey withdrew her claim when it became politically embarrassing to her. That does suggest that the reason she withdrew her claim was to avoid embarrassment; this does not mean that the claim itself was dodgy or that she acted dishonestly in bringing it in the first place. If Mirror Group could have stood over those allegations, presumably it would not have settled the case and apologised.

Your "good payday" comment looks a bit speculative. Nothing in the article you link says that Mirror Group made any payment at all or, if so, to whom or of how much. Do you know something here that the rest of us don't?

As for where it fits in (to this thread), I don't think it fits in at all. The thread is about "crazy court awards"; no court award was made here — this was an agreement between Bailey and Mirror Group.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121339978#Comment_121339978

I was just putting out an example, whether she received a settlement will never be known. Either way, taking a claim against an establishment because you "fell" off a swing is something that came back to bite her.

Peregrinus

So was it "a good payday either way", or did it come back to bite her? I don't see that it can be both.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121339997#Comment_121339997

Well, we will never know.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121340004#Comment_121340004

So you've made two claims, and you don't know if either of them is true? 😉

Robbo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058321555/crazy-court-awards

I suppose one way to "stop the insanity" would be for defendants to actually defend these claims better. In this case, at trial, the defendant only called one witness as to fact and he was a bar manager who didn't arrive on the locus until 10 minutes after the incident.

I note in the judgment that the bar manager 'confirmed that there was CCTV footage but he described it as having been “grainy” and it showed nothing so was not retained', which is rather unfortunate as the owner of the hotel is known for his trenchant views on CCTV being the silver bullet to defend all claims.

Further to this, it appears that the kind of documentation that has been commonplace in the hospitality industry for years was unfortunately not part of the setup at this hotel. It was noted that "the defendant produced no documents evidencing any system of inspection, detection or cleaning of spillages and [the bar manager] said there was no formalised sign-in and sign-out sheet which had only been introduced subsequently". A terribly unfortunate oversight on the part of the defendants/appellants.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121339997#Comment_121339997

It ended her political career directly or indirectly. If it was a genuine claim why would she not pursue it whether it was embarrassing or not. If she genuinely sustained injuries she was 100% entitled to claim. She received a settlement from the Mirror group so yes, it came back to bite her and she received a good payday.

NUTLEY BOY

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058321555/crazy-court-awards

Yes. There is a way to stop " this insanity ".

Most of these defendants have liability insurance cover behind them and it is they who finance these settlements or awards. If I understand the basic principles of insurance properly we all pay in to a common pool by way of premiums charged - as you have effectively observed. A point may well be reached whereby public liability insurance - commercial in particular - may become unaffordable to policyholders and or not financially viable to underwriters.

As soon as the funding to make personal injuries a worthwhile enterprise dries up that might kill off the insanity. Judges who make generous awards contribute to the problem as they set the mark for expected damages. High awards = high expectations = high demands in terms of damages.

An award not greater than the special damages fails to indemnify the injured party as they are not being put back in the position they enjoyed before the injury was sustained. Paradoxically, consider the matter of the criminal injuries compensation board. Sometime back in the 1980s, I think, you could receive full compensation including pain and suffering. I think that the entitlement to general damages for pain and suffering was simply abolished by a newer scheme.

No, we should not tax it as income as that also fails to indemnify the injured party. If we did tax it then plaintiffs would probably receive higher grossed up awards that would, after taxation, create a level of net compensation that would then be adequate. Put another way, I think that the idea would be self-defeating.

Criminal negligence is not a true concept recognised by the tort of negligence. How would you actually define it anyway ?

That said, if commercial entities cannot afford liability insurance or underwriters stop offering the product that will actually put people out of business for a host of reasons. I once heard insurance described as the fifth factor of production after land, labour, capital and enterprise.

onedmc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121339889#Comment_121339889

To me it makes no difference whether the floor was wet or not. I doubt that the hotel poured the water there and even it they had we have a personal responsibility to be careful when we walk, dance or take alcohol.

onedmc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121350393#Comment_121350393

You seem to have a good understanding of the insurance business. It is already a significant cost to business, puts business out of business, and raises the cost for all of us. Many countries have no concept of personal injuries and the individual would get nothing. And even in countries with similar common law mechanism, I can't imagine the payout would be this big

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121351961#Comment_121351961

The thinking here is that the hotel is the place that rents the space, sells the drink, accommodates the visitors, etc, and make a profit from doing so. The hotel is also the person best positioned to control the environment and keep it safe. So, the risk of injury is one created by the hotel with a view to profit, and managed and controlled by the hotel; it would be wildly irrational to create an incentive for the hotel to skimp on supervision, cleaning, monitoring overcrowding, etc in order to maximise its profits, while letting the downside risk of that behaviour fall on others. Hence, the hotel bears the risk, and manages it through a combination of good practice and insurance. The less good practice they have, the more their insurance will cost them, broadly speaking.

For obvious reasons, this approach is pretty much standard internationally. In an earlier version of this post you mentioned countries that have "no concept of personal injuries". I would be interested to know more; can you name any such countries?

Robbo

Post script to this, Atlantic Troy were rinsed on costs on this by the Court of Appeal because they tried to settle matters on the cheap and made a hames of it.

wingnut

I always think of the woman awarded €135000 when wheetabix fell on her in Tesco:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/nurse-hit-by-falling-weetabix-boxes-awarded-135-000-1.2115934

Another Tesco one, not a huge sum more what it was awareded for. Boys got €10,000 because there mum gave them out of date milk to drink:

https://www.thejournal.ie/compensation-out-of-date-milk-tesco-5234508-Oct2020/

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121632273#Comment_121632273

did you read the weetabix article before posting this? it mentions "further surgery" which implies she has already had surgery for her injury. while boxes of cereal falling on you would not normally cause long term problems it is clear that in this case it has caused long-term, on-going, problems. how much do you think that should be worth and how are you calculating that figure?

Economics101

Not an injury award, but says a lot about the HSE and the propensity to waste public money. Fancy leaving someone on the payroll with no-one to report to for years.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0201/1429966-hse-to-pay-worker-31-666-for-unpaid-leave-over-15-years/