The Supreme Court has overturned a €111,000 award of damages to a young man whose right leg was amputated below the knee as a result of being hit by a train after he fell asleep beside a railway track "with a feed of alcoholic drink on him" in the early hours of the morning.
The Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, said Derek Raleigh, who was almost aged 20 at the time of the accident in Co Offaly in 1995, was the "author of his own misfortune" and Iarnród Éireann could not be held liable for this tragic accident on grounds that it must be expected to foresee such acts of "folly" or "stupidity" by adults who came onto its property. The situation was different when children were involved, he added.
The Chief Justice also stressed that no blame whatever could be attributed to the train driver who had to deal with the sudden appearance on the track of Mr Raleigh and his girlfriend in the early hours of the morning.
The three-judge court ruled that the cause of the accident was not the fact of Mr Raleigh entering onto the ClaraTullamore railway embankment but the fact that he, having entered, caused the danger to himself by first of all taking drink, then staying in the area for some six hours and falling asleep beside the railway line in such circumstances that he could not avoid the danger of an approaching train when he was woken up by the sound of its horn.
It also rejected claims that the company should have erected a palisade fence at the point where Mr Raleigh and others entered onto the embankment.
Mr Raleigh was awakened and alerted to the oncoming train because the driver saw him and his girlfriend on the track as the train approached them and the driver sounded the train's horn, the court heard. Mr Raleigh pushed the girl out of the way but the train hit his leg, resulting in such severe injuries that it had to be amputated.
The High Court had assessed damages for that injury in the total sum of €740,539 but, because that court held Mr Raleigh to be 85 per cent negligent in relation to the accident, it ordered he receive just 15 per cent of that amount - €111,081.
A stay was put on payment of the award pending the outcome of Iarnród Éireann's appeal to the Supreme Court which yesterday unanimously allowed the appeal and awarded costs of the appeal to the rail company. Martin Gleeson SC, for the company, said there probably was "no reality" in his costs application but he was instructed to make it.
Mr Raleigh (31), a panel beater, of Arden Road, Tullamore, had sued Iarnród Éireann over the incident, which occurred between 3.30am and 4.30am on Sunday, August 12th, 1995, on the Clara-Tullamore rail line.
He and his girlfriend and others had gone to a part of the railway where, Mr Raleigh had claimed, people were accustomed to gather from time to time to socialise and drink. Access was gained by climbing a 4ft 6in-high (1.4m) wall and then negotiating a steep bank.
Having had some drinks at the entry point, Mr Raleigh and his companions moved to another location 200 yards away where they had more drink. Mr Raleigh's friends left and he and his girlfriend stayed, sitting on sleepers with their backs to the railway, and he and his girlfriend fell asleep on the sleepers.
His next memory was of hearing the horn of a train, which woke him up, and of seeing the light of a train approaching very close to him. He grabbed his girlfriend, who apparently had not woken up, and, in a crouched position, pulled her away.
However, while he succeeded in getting her away from the line, his right leg was struck by the train.
Yesterday, during the appeal hearing, Mr Gleeson said that, were it not for the quick action of the train driver in sounding the horn, there could have been two fatalities.
Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman asked Colm Smyth SC, for Mr Raleigh, was it not "a nonsense" to suggest that a railway authority is liable to a person who gets drunk on a rail track, falls asleep and is hit when a train comes along. Mr Smyth said the rail authority was well aware people were drinking on its property and should not have tolerated it.
