A High Court judge has approved a €1 million settlement of compensation for a brain injury due to a road traffic accident in favour of a 60-year-old woman.
In September 2011, Elena Schiopu from Dublin was pushing her granddaughter in a buggy across Morehampton Road when she was struck by a car whose driver was attempting to undertake the vehicle that had given way to the sixty-year-old woman.
Elena was knocked to the ground, and although she had been injured in the accident she went home with her unharmed granddaughter. She later developed slurred speech and a weakness in her upper and lower limbs.
Elena´s family insisted that she went to hospital, where she was admitted and remained in intensive care for seventeen days as her condition deteriorated and she was unable to communicate. Elena was diagnosed with a quadriplegic brain injury and transferred to a nursing home in 2012.
Through her daughter, Elena claimed compensation for a brain injury due to a road traffic accident against the driver of the car who had struck her as she was crossing the road – Eamon McElwain of Donnybrook in Dublin.
McElwain contested the claim on the grounds that he had not been speeding or driving dangerously and that Elena had not been looking as she attempted to cross the road. Elena´s family argued that McElwain had undertaken the stationary vehicle when he should have known it might be unsafe to do so.
A settlement of compensation for a brain injury due to a traffic accident was negotiated between the two parties and, at the High Court in Dublin, Ms Justice Mary Irvine was told of the circumstances that led to Elena´s tragic injury, after which she approved the settlement and extended her sympathies to the family.