A boxer who says his professional career ended when his left hand was crushed by a digger bucket at work has won €6,000 for constructive dismissal.
Four-time national amateur champion Roy Sheahan told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) earlier this year he was forced to quit his building job three months after going back to work after the injury because of the strain of new “heavy” duties on his good hand.
In a decision published this morning, the tribunal upheld his complaint of constructive dismissal pursuant to the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Kendra Civil Engineering (Ireland) Ltd and made the order for losses.
Mr Sheahan said in evidence that that his hand was “squashed” against concrete during works on a drain on a building site in January 2020 in at Grange Castle in Clondalkin on Dublin’s westside.
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“I’d seven pins in my hand, two broken bones, squashed ligaments and tendons both sides,” he told the tribunal.
“It stopped my boxing career. That’s all I’d ever done all my life. [In] 2018 I had my sights on going bigger ‘til this happened,” he said.
Mr Sheahan said that by the winter of 2020 he was resorting to holding his left hand in the exhaust gases of a machine he was operating because of the state it was in.
Michael Kinsey BL, who appeared for Mr Sheahan instructed by Éarainn Ó Conacháin-Briain of Daly Khurshid Solicitors LLP, said his client had been certified fit to return to work in September 2020 by a consultant doctor who wrote that it would be “in Roy’s interests to resume on light duties”.
Mr Sheahan said in evidence that he spoke with the company’s managing director, Dan Curtis, about returning to work and was told he would be put on a site in Ashtown, Dublin 15, until he got training that would allow him to work on a job at Dublin Airport where he expected lighter duties.
“It was terrible, I was driving the dumper, and I had to lift all the manhole covers over to the dumper,” he said.
He said he complained to Kendra’s site safety manager, Trevor Murtagh, about the duties during monthly audits but that a promised transfer never came.
The complainant maintained this was because he had taken a personal injury claim over what happened with the digger bucket.
The tribunal heard evidence of a text from Mr Sheahan to a WhatsApp group on December 15th, 2020, in which he stated: “I have an injury since I went back to work and now I have another one on my right hand from work, nothing broke or crushed. I’ve told [the] head lad for Liffeys and I am seeing my physio so waiting on a hand specialist.”
Cross-examining Mr Sheahan, solicitor Fiona Egan, for the company, said the specialist doctor’s note of September 2020 stated the complainant was “free to pursue unrestricted work activities” and that the reference to light duties was as an “initial lead-in”.
“I am genuinely a good friend of Roy’s. If I didn’t want Roy back to work I wouldn’t have taken him. I got letters to say he was ‘unrestricted’. To me I thought I was doing everything right,” the company boss Mr Curtis said in his direct evidence.
“I just feel it’s very unfair. I feel I’ve done my best to make sure Roy was well looked after. I’ve been in business 50 years, never had a claim of constructive dismissal. I’ve never dealt with one before,” he added.
The construction group’s safety manager, Mr Murtagh, said he had spoken to the complainant during safety audits at the site in the autumn and winter of 2020.
He said Mr Sheahan “missed his old site, missed his old buddies, missed his few bob he was getting in overtime” but that the complainant had never raised an injury as an issue.
“It goes against my training and my job to ignore something like that, stupid. I’d have noted it in my audits,” he said.
He was asked by Mr Kinsley in cross-examination where the safety audit sheets were for December 2020 and January 2021 – as the firm had only produced them up to November 2020, and Mr Murtagh replied that he did not have them.
In her decision on the case, adjudicating officer Valerie Murtagh made the finding that Mr Sheahan “did bring issues regarding the heavy duty work” up with his employer and that it was “exacerbating his hand injury”.
She accepted Mr Sheahan “felt he had no other option but to resign” over the company’s conduct and upheld his constructive dismissal complaint.
However, she awarded Mr Sheahan only reduced compensation of €6,000, ruling that his efforts to find new work to mitigate his losses were not up to the standard set out by the Labour Court in case law requiring him to spend “a reasonable amount of time each weekday” to mitigate his loss.
At the time of the hearing in January this year, the WRC was told a separate personal injury claim was ongoing.
Mr Sheahan, from Athy, Co Kildare, boxed as a southpaw and went professional in 2018, throwing down the gauntlet to Conor McGregor on the back of a 5-0 win streak that year.
The mixed martial arts superstar replied on social that facing the Athy southpaw would be a “proper fight”.