A judge has described compensation-seekers as suffering from a "rabid disease" spreading like wildfire.
"It is a mental disease that will challenge the lexicographers of medical dictionaries to define, a mindset which I can only describe as compensationitis," Judge Liam Devally said yesterday in the Circuit Civil Court.
Judge Devally dismissed a claim for damages by Mr Darren Maples, (19) of Ferrycarrig Park, Coolock, Dublin, who injured his ankle four years ago while playing five-a-side football in the gymnasium at Colaiste Dhulaigh, Coolock. He sued City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee for up to £30,000 damages for personal injury.
He was ordered to pay the committee's legal costs.
The court had heard that Maples and nine other teenage schoolboys had been engaged in an unsupervised five-a-side game in the school gym when he had been kicked on his right ankle while contesting a 50-50 ball. He agreed that school rules banned the playing of games without supervision.