‘It’s not my fault people keep driving into me’
But accident-prone motorist has compensation claim thrown out
A MAN who has pocketed €40,000 in payouts from claims arising out of car accidents and a fall has said it’s not his fault that people keep ‘driving into me’. Gerry McDonagh who has been in ten road traffic accidents – including six since 2012 – told Ennis Circuit Court yesterday: ‘I don’t go around claiming off people for nothing. If you get hurted, you get hurted.’
Mr McDonagh was giving evidence concerning his latest compensation claim for alleged injuries in a road traffic accident in 2012 against a then 19-year-old female driver that was dismissed by Judge Gerald Keys.
Judge Keys threw out Mr McDonagh’s claim after finding that he had failed to establish that the driver of the other car, Niamh Kitson, was in any way negligent in causing the accident at the entrance to a petrol station in Ennis, Co. Clare on August 10, 2012.
Mr McDonagh of Fanningstown, Fedamore, Co. Limerick, has made four separate successful compensation claims with awards totalling €40,700.
Those claims comprised two road traffic accidents, one fall following a trip, and another fall down the stairs of his local authority home 25 years ago.
Siobhán Gallagher BL, counsel for Ms Kitson, told the court that the August 2012 crash in Ennis occurred just months after two other road traffic accidents involving Mr McDonagh, one in May 2012 and the other in July 2012. Ms Gallagher said that Mr McDonagh has also been involved in road traffic accidents in October 2015, November 2016 and June 2017.
Ms Gallagher said that Mr McDonagh has also been involved in a number of falls. She said Mr McDonagh fell a distance of 1.8metres from a ladder in May 2013; he had another fall in August 2013.
She said: ‘There was an incident with a gentlemen on a water-slide who fell down on top of you and you sustained injuries.’
In reply, Mr McDonagh said: ‘I didn’t put in claims.’
Mr McDonagh said that his first accident was in a corporation house in Limerick and he received €14,000 for that.
Mr McDonagh said that 35 years ago, he was knocked off his motorbike. He said: ‘I never got any money out of that – my mother did. I never got anything.’
In 2001, Mr McDonagh received €5,000 arising out of a road traffic accident and a further €11,000 from Limerick County Council as a result of back injuries sustained after a trip and fall in 2007.
Ms Gallagher said that Mr McDonagh received a further €10,700 from a road traffic accident in 2008.
Ms Gallagher said that in disclosure Mr McDonagh did not say he had been in a crash in May 2012.
Later during his cross-examination by Ms Gallagher, Mr McDonagh told the court: ‘I have had back pain for years from the accidents I have had.’
In evidence, Ms Kitson said that Mr McDonagh crashed into her stationary car at the exit of a petrol station on Ennis’s Lahinch Road, contradicting Mr McDonagh’s claim that Ms Kitson drove into his car.
The estimated cost of the damage to Ms Kitson’s car was €579 and the estimated cost of repairs to Mr McDonagh’s €1,166. An expert told the court that both cars sustained ‘light impact’.
Ms Kitson told the court that the damage to her car was so minor she had not carried out any repairs on it. She said: ‘You wouldn’t even know if there was a dent on my car.’