€75,000 for woman who broke wrist in supermarket tumble
A FORMER Glanbia employee who broke her wrist when she slipped on spilt cream in a Dunnes supermarket has received €75,000 in damages.
Judge Kevin Cross awarded the compensation to Maureen Curran, 64, saying that part of a floor at the supermarket had been left wet and in a slippery condition following an incomplete effort to clean and dry it.
He said there should have been a second warning sign put out to mark out the potentially dangerous area.
He accepted medical evidence that her ‘sudden and helpless fall’ had triggered the onset of osteoarthritis in her wrist, which had previously been asymptomatic, and that she still suffered from pain five years on.
The judge said it had been a ‘nasty injury’, and that she had been an honest witness who did not exaggerate her symptoms, which have had a severe effect on her life.
However, he said he could not agree with Ms Curran’s claim for loss of earnings, as he accepted evidence from Glanbia that her subsequent redundancy had nothing to do with her fall, and that the job she was doing was simply no longer available.
Ms Curran, of Tymonville Court, Tallaght, Dublin, had sued both Dunnes Stores and Glanbia.
She said she fell in September 2013 in a store in Cavan while she was inspecting products for Glanbia in her role as area sales manager for the dairy giant.
Ms Curran said she had not seen anybody cleaning the floor when she walked along the dairy aisle of the supermarket.
She said she saw one yellow warning sign, but there was nothing visible next to it.
She said she was around four to five feet away from this sign when she fell.
The judge said there should have been a second sign placed on Ms Curran’s side of the spillage area, clearly marking out the potentially wet area.
Ms Curran told the court: ‘I felt my feet go from under me and I couldn’t control it, and I went and I fell and I landed sideways... As I picked up my phone I realised my hand wouldn’t work as it should work.’ She said she was taken to hospital, where an X-ray confirmed she had fractured her wrist, and she was given a cast.
Ms Curran returned to work in December after the cast was removed. She said the weakness in her wrist continued, leaving her unable to lift heavy objects. She still has to wear a splint.
Ms Curran said she was upset when she was made redundant in January 2015, having hoped to work until she was 65 or 66.
She had worked for Glanbia for around 30 years and said she had loved her work, but she claimed her injury had made it hard to find a new role.
It also interfered with her ability to do housework or gardening, she said, and she continued to need pain killing medication.
Shelf stacker Dolores Duffy told the court yesterday that it was she who dropped the carton of cream that spilled right across the dairy aisle. She said she left a fellow shelf stacker to warn shoppers of the danger, while she went to get a mop and bucket.
Ms Duffy said she had dried the area with industrial blue paper towel before Ms Curran walked past. She agreed the CCTV cameras showed her wiping the floor again following Ms Curran’s fall.
Cross examined by Hugh O’Keeffe SC, for Ms Curran, she agreed she knew of no other instance when someone’s legs had slipped from under them on the dry floor of the supermarket.
Engineer Lloyd Semple said Dunnes Stores had allowed members of the public to walk through the area where the spill took place before finishing the cleaning process.
This allowed the oily residue to be spread further, he said.
He also said the evidence from the CCTV footage showed staff had not followed the correct cleaning procedure to ensure the area was clean and dry.
‘Realised my hand wouldn’t work’