A former Sunday World columnist, Ms Micheline McCormack, who was injured when she fell in a supermarket, wrote in her column about it only days after it happened, a court has been told.
In the Circuit Civil Court, Judge Bryan McMahon heard that under the headline "It Could Have Been My Turn To Sue - But I Didn't" Ms McCormack described her fall. Almost five years after her fall and the publication of her article, in which she said that at the time she was fine, Ms McCormack, of Newgrove Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin, settled her £30,000 damages claim against Power Supermarkets Ltd for an undisclosed sum.
She told Mr David Nolan, counsel for the owners of the Quinnsworth store in the Nutgrove Shopping Centre, she was "stiff but fine" when she wrote the article in her Woman's World column. Ms McCormack said it was almost a month after her fall that she developed the pains in her back, neck and arm that brought her to court. The court heard that in her article she wrote that immediately after her fall compensation "set in" - "not with me, I hasten to add, but with two very nice women who happened to be nearby."
Outlining how they had advised her on claiming compensation, she had said: "It doesn't surprise me one bit that the insurance industry stepped up the battle against bogus claims this week and warned the public not to be tempted into making exaggerated claims."
She had quoted Dublin Corporation, which that year, 1994, had expected to pay a record £6 million, as having discovered particular pockets where there was a "claims culture." Ms McCormack's article, and her evidence to court, referred to the floor in the supermarket having been wet and sticky from broken eggs which had not been wiped away. Medical evidence revealed that Ms McCormack (55) had, as a result of the fall, suffered an injury to her lower back which had left her with ongoing and intermittent pain.