A HIGH Court judge has ruled that a building worker is not entitled to damages over an accident in which he lost a thumb because he gave false information about loss of earnings and a video showed him working for years afterwards.
Patrick Higgins, Fennor, Oldcastle, Meath, was a hard-working and likeable man but misleading evidence in his affidavit was “not trivial” and was intended to support a claim for substantial damages, Mr Justice John Quirke said.
Mr Higgins had sued over an accident on March 19th, 2002, when his coat sleeve became entangled in the shaft of a tractor which he was seeking to buy on behalf of Caldark Ltd, his brother John Higgins’s company. Despite emergency surgery, his right thumb had to be amputated.
Mr Higgins sued Caldark, claiming another brother of his, also employed by the company, had activated the tractor when it was unsafe to do so. He also sued the owner of the tractor, who, the court heard, had been indemnified by Caldark in relation to court costs.
Dismissing the claim yesterday, Mr Justice Quirke said Mr Higgins had suffered an injury some years previously in circumstances quite similar to the tractor accident.
On that occasion, he was bending behind a lawnmower which was started unexpectedly and he suffered a severe injury to his left hand. He recovered damages from the person who started the lawnmower.
In the case before him, the judge said he was satisfied the defendants were negligent, but that Mr Higgins also contributed to his injury by failing to keep a proper lookout.
Given his previous hand injury in similar circumstances, he had particular reason to take care when bending at the rear of a tractor, the judge said. He ruled that 75 per cent of Mr Higgins’s injuries must be attributed to the defendants and 25 per cent to himself.
However, the judge continued, the defendants had applied for a dismissal of the case under Section 14 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004 which allows such dismissals on grounds of false and misleading evidence.
The judge said Mr Higgins had sworn an affidavit in December 2008 that information supplied by him in relation to loss of earnings was true. However, during the hearing, it emerged that Mr Higgins had failed to state he had been paid more than €40,000, along with expenses and the provision of a 4x4 vehicle, by his brother’s company between 2002 and 2004.
On five occasions between October 2005 and February 2008, Mr Higgins was video-recorded carrying out work on behalf of his brother’s company on building sites in Dublin and Longford and those recordings were part of the evidence before the court, the judge added. Mr Higgins had told an occupational therapist in May 2005 he was “virtually confined to the house”, the judge noted.
