A yoga teacher who claims she still suffers neck and shoulder pain after her car was rear-ended seven years ago has told the High Court her Instagram account showed her doing shoulder and headstands because she needs interesting poses on social media.
“It is my livelihood, nobody wants somebody sitting in a cross-legged pose,” Chloe Geraghty told Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds.
The High Court judge has been asked to assess damages in the case of Ms Geraghty (28).
While being cross-examined, the yoga teacher said she disagreed with the other side’s contention that she did not sustain an injury.
Ms Geraghty, from Lucan but now living in Spain, sued the driver of the other car, Eoin Carroll, from Stocking Wood Copse, Rathfarnham, Dublin, in the Circuit Court. The case was struck out because she could not travel back from Spain, but she brought an appeal to the High Court.
She has claimed that after the incident on June 8th, 2017, she suffered pain in her neck and shoulder and was diagnosed as having a soft tissue injury. She was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication and advised to attend physiotherapy.
Opening the case, Ms Geraghty’s senior counsel Thomas P Hogan told the court that liability was conceded but the other side alleges the impact was of no consequence.
He said it was his client’s case that her car was shunted forward about a metre in the incident, and she suffered a neck and shoulder injury.
Ms Geraghty said that at the time she was working as a personal shopper and was dropping out items to Dundrum. She said she was thrown forward a little bit and that the airbags did not go off. She later had pain and attended her GP a week later. The doctor noted tenderness to her neck and she later attended physiotherapy.
She said her neck and shoulder area was quite painful, and she would not say it was minimal “but ongoing”.
She said she later became a yoga teacher but finds if she “takes it too far with the yoga, she will have a lot of pain”.
She attended yoga teacher training in Thailand in 2019 but said she suffered after classes. She said she was focusing on rebuilding her strength.
Cross-examined by Moira Flahive, senior counsel for the other side, Ms Geraghty agreed she had an Instagram page for her yoga business.
Referring to the Thailand yoga training which involved three classes a day and one hour in the gym, she said she was in a lot of pain afterwards and was on painkillers.
Referring to a number of Instagram posts, counsel put to the witness that she advised in one post not to do it if you have any type of neck injury but appeared to be going against her own advice.
Ms Geraghty replied: “I am going against my own advice, but I do have a neck injury.”
She said she has to take painkillers every day.
She said she never told a doctor who had later examined her about her yoga teacher training or standing on her head because he never asked.
The case continues next week.
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