Broken Glass Accident Leads to €50,000 Inadequate Safety Training Compensation for Waitress by court

by | Jul 22, 2020

A waitress who suffered a hand injury after a glass she was polishing broke has been awarded €50,000 work injury compensation at the CIircuit Civil Court.

It was ruled that 24-year-old former waitress Daniela Tricolici should have been given adequate safety training in relation to polishing wine glasses by her them employers Ravellos Restaurant in Clonsilla in 2015.

Presiding Judge John O’Connor said in awarding Ms Tricolici €25,000 damages and her legal costs that: “I am satisfied on the balance of probability that the defendant in this case was negligent. There was no training provided and it should have been.”

Judge O’Connor said he was happy to rule that the defendant, ABE Restaurant Limited, Weaver’s Row, Clonsilla, had been negligent due to the fact that appropriate training for Ms Tricolici had not been provided.

Ms Tricolici, with at an address at Ravenswood Road Clonsilla, is now working in a bank. SHe told the Court that the stem of the glass had broken as she polished it in the bar area of the restaurant on September 18, 2015 and punctured her left little finger.

Giving evidence in the hearing, forensic engineer Conor Murphy informed the court that Ms Tricolici had shown him how she was polishing the glass with a towel when the accident took place. He commented that she (Ms Tricolici) should have been trained initially how to do it safely. Mr Murphy said Ms Tricolici, as indicated in a photograph provided to the court, had grasped the base of the wine glass in one hand while polishing the bowl with her other hand in a twist and turn fashion when the stem had snapped.

When questioned by barrister Conor Kearney, who was appearing alongside with Seamus Maguire Solicitors for Ms Tricolici, he said that the waitress had clearly been polishing the glass incorrectly and should have been stopped by her employer and shown how to do it properly.  He said that if Ms Tricolici had been cupping the bowl of the glass in one hand while using the polishing cloth with her other hand it was unlikely that the glass would have snapped and injured her as it did on the day in question.

Legal representatives for the defendant argued against this that there is no specific provision in legislation or a particular manual related to glass polishing, nor had he had seen proper and safe methods of glass polishing demonstrated on video by glass manufacturers. Additionally it was claimed that it would be imposing a massive burden on an employer to ask them to train someone when there was no accepted official training regime or accepted pattern of training in existence as to how a particular task should be carried out.

Following the accident the woman was taken to Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, for the wound to be treated. Here it was discovered that she had been left with a small scar and that damage to a nerve in her finger had not properly mended. She suffers from hypersensitivity in the area of the injury to this day.

 

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