A boy (5) has been awarded €20,000 personal trauma injury compensation after he saw his mother being seriously injured and bleeding after she collided with a pane of glass when he was only 15-months-old.
Legal representatives for the young boy, Jude Johnson-Rice, informed the Circuit Civil Court that in December 2014 the he was visiting Terenure College Rugby Football Club with his mother, Jill, when he was witness to his mother’s injuries after she walked into a clear glass pane that did not have the required cautions or warning signs.
Even though he did not directly see the accident or the glass breaking, Jude had been extremely upset by seeing his mother covered in blood after the accident. The defendants, Panda Play Café Limited and Terenure College Rugby Football Club, had already agreed a trauma compensation settlement with the Jude’s claim of €20,000 for the five-year-old boy.
Legal representatives for the rugby club argued that the child had not experienced any recognised psychiatric injury. Along with this they argued that the mother had waited for two years after the incident to bring her son for medical treatment despite claiming in court that her son had been very nervous and anxious for six months in the aftermath of the incident.
After deliberations between the legal teams from both sides, the family solicitor John Murphy advised the defendants, after they denied liability, that they could incur additional serious costs arising out of inspections and the provision of cctv footage. Following a settlement meeting a personal injury compensation offer of had been made.
Judge Garavan said that, while there was no recognised psychiatric illness diagnosed by any medical specialist, there were many cases that came before the court that did not measure up to post traumatic stress disorder and as such, he approved the settlement offer.