The Supreme Court has found in favour of RSA Insurance Ireland in a dispute with Zurich Insurance over which firm must indemnify a bin company worker’s devastating injuries.
Joseph Moore, an employee of Urban and Rural Recycling Ltd (URRL), based in Wexford, suffered life-changing injuries in the December 19th, 2013, accident.
While he was operating a bin lift on the lorry, a bin which was near its emptying position fell and struck him on the head.
Mr Moore, who was also the driver of the vehicle, brought a claim against his employer, URRL, alleging, among other things, negligence and a failure to provide a safe system of work.
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The High Court found Zurich Insurance plc was liable, under a motor policy, for the injuries. The Court of Appeal overturned this, holding instead that RSA Insurance Ireland, as the employer’s liability insurer, should answer the claim.
RSA was granted another appeal in the Supreme Court, which on Thursday found in its favour on the legal points.The five-judge court also said there was a need for a complete overhaul of the mandatory motor insurance requirement.
Giving the court’s unanimous judgment, Mr Justice Brian Murray found that Zurich’s contentions as to the proper construction of the law on mandatory motor insurance, section 56 of the Road Traffic Act, were not well founded.
URRL as a body corporate was not incapable of being a user of such a vehicle, he said.
It was possible for an employer – in this case URRL – to “use” a vehicle through the actions of its employee undertaken in the course of that worker’s employment, he said.
The appeal raised issues about the ambit of the mandatory motor insurance obligation, as well as potentially novel questions regarding the proper interpretation of a 2009 European Council directive that requires member states to adopt measures to ensure motor insurance covers civil liability.
Mr Justice Murray said that while he was conscious that the potential influence of the 2009 directive had never been far from this case, it had not been necessary for him to rely on its terms for the conclusions he reached.
However, he said legislators should look at the mandatory motor insurance provision because if it does not properly implement European Union law, the effect may be to exposé the taxpayer to the cost of compensating the victim of an accident in circumstances in which that cost was intended to be a motor insurer’s obligation.
“It might also be thought that continuous piecemeal changes to those provisions increase the risk of further noncompliance, and that a complete and coherent legislative overhaul of the compulsory motor insurance obligation, is long overdue”, he said.
The judge said that having answered the questions of law in this case in favour of RSA and against Zurich, it was a matter for the parties to proceed to agitate the application of those findings of law in these proceedings “as they think appropriate”.
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