Worker stripped of €16.5k award after court reviews CCTV footage

A DUNNES Stores sales assistant has been stripped of her €16,500 award after her credibility was ‘fundamentally undermined’ when the High Court reviewed CCTV footage of her fall from a two-step ladder.

Judge David Keane said footage shows that Jean Falsey fell from the ladder and it did not collapse under her, as she had claimed.

Ms Falsey had stated that when she was coming down the ladder, having straightened the box containing a bottle of Midleton Reserve Whiskey on the top shelf, she felt it ‘just give way’. She said she fell heavily on her shoulder, required treatment, including physiotherapy, and continues to suffer.

The judge said the direct conflict between Ms Falsey’s ‘unwavering insistence that the step-ladder went from under her or, at the very least, fell with her, and the CCTV footage, which shows that she fell from it while it was completely stationary, had fundamentally undermined the credibility of her testimony’. Judge Keane found that Ms Falsey put herself at risk in the way she used the step-ladder at the off-licence area of Dunnes Stores at St Kieran’s Street at Kilkenny City at 3.30pm at June 27, 2014.

Judge Keane also found that there was no material defect to the step-ladder. Under cross examination on the CCTV footage, Ms Falsey acknowledged that the ladder does not move. Dunnes Stores was appealing a District Court ruling that Dunnes and Ms Falsey had joint responsibility for the accident.

Dunnes Security Manager Jodie Moher testified that Ms Falsey said to her: ‘I was coming down off the ladder. It was my own fault.’ She said another sales assistant named Delia Walsh asked Ms Falsey the same question and received the same answer. Ms Walsh denied that. Judge Keane said Ms Moher was a credible witness and he did not accept the testimony of Ms Walsh.