€110k over no training to collect post
AN ESB worker has won €110,000 in damages after a judge said he wasn’t trained to deliver post.
The High Court heard how Terry Morgan, who worked for the ESB for 38 years, picked up the post, including eight large envelopes and a small parcel, and went down steps made of metal and plastic tiles.
Judge Bronagh O’Hanlon said the 60-year-old told how he went to step from the landing to the first step down the stairs when his feet went from under him, on May 1, 2013. He was sore and winded, and noticed water on the landing and on the first step. He continued working but began to feel very sore and stopped work an hour early, the judge said.
The next day Mr Morgan, of Ravensdale, Dundalk, Co. Louth went to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, and told the ESB’s area supervisor about the accident, at the ESB offices in Avenue Road, Dundalk.
He was out of work for four or five months, had pain in his neck and shoulder and had an inflammed shoulder. He received physiotherapy, steroid injections, nerve block injections and morphine-based medicine. He said he can no longer walk, golf, garden, cycle or swim.
Judge O’Hanlon said he used both hands to carry the post, and had neglected to hold onto the handrail, but she ruled that he had not been trained by the ESB in the collection of it, so he could not be partly blamed as there was also a problem with the step design.
She awarded €88,000 and €22,000 for agreed expenses.