A woman, who injured her back while climbing into her rented home through a window, has lost a €38,000 damages claim against her former landlords.
Ms Susan Coen (42), Upper Kilmacud Road, Dublin, told Judge Elizabeth Dunne in the Circuit Civil Court she had been obliged to climb through the window because the lock on the front door would not open.
She said that in September 1997 she had left her three-month-old baby asleep in the rented house at Oak Tree Road, Stillorgan, while she left her other children to school only two minutes away. When she returned the front-door lock would not open, despite her having wriggled the key in it for up to 10 minutes.
Ms Coen said she decided to climb in through a partly open ground-floor window and stood on an upturned plastic bin. She had climbed on to the window sill, and as she entered through the window she had fallen into the room, striking a chair before hitting the floor and injuring her back.
She said she had not gone to her doctor for several months after the accident, attending instead a chiropractor who 16 years earlier dealt with a problem in her back. After attending her doctor, she had attended hospital and later had been referred to a orthopaedic surgeon.
She said she still had back problems,despite physiotherapy and courses of anti-inflammatory tablets.
Ms Coen agreed with Mr Declan Buckley, counsel for landlords Gillian and Robert Higgins, Acorn Road, Dundrum, Dublin, that repairs had previously been carried out to the lock after she had complained, but she maintained it had never properly been fixed.
Mr Buckley told the court his clients had oiled the lock several times.
Eventually, Ms Higgins had told her to have the lock replaced at the landlords' expense.
Judge Dunne dismissed Ms Coen's claim and directed she pay her former landlords' legal costs. She said she could see no basis of negligence on the part of the landlords. "To find for the plaintiff would be stretching negligence to breaking point," Judge Dunne said.