A CORK Corporation foreman has told the High Court in Cork that he had never come across a toilet bowl collapsing and fragmenting beneath someone using it.
The senior foreman, Mr Frank Kelleher, was giving evidence in the case of a mother of four, Mrs Mary Sheehan, who was awarded £21,800 in the Circuit Court for injuries to her posterior after the toilet collapsed in her corporation home. Mrs Sheehan, of Ardmore Avenue, Knocknaheeny, Cork, spent two days in intensive care and 10 days in hospital after the accident on October 5th, 1995.
Cork Corporation is appealing the Circuit Court award to Mrs Sheehan. The case is expected to conclude in the High Court before Ms Justice Laffoy today.
Mrs Sheehan has claimed the toilet bowl was cracked for several months before the accident, had been missing a screw for over two years and was wobbly.
Mr Kelleher yesterday said he examined the remains of the toilet the morning after the accident and could find no evidence of cracks as claimed by Mrs Sheehan. "There were no cracks or anything suggesting cracks and it was properly fixed to the concrete floor. I tried to move it but there was no movement whatsoever.
"I just could see nothing wrong with what remained," he said, adding that the bowl was broken just above the water level when he inspected it in the house.
A Cork Corporation engineer, Mr Joe Moynihan, said the corporation had no record of receiving a complaint about the toilet from the Sheehans four months before the accident as Mrs Sheehan claimed. The corporation had a computer which logged all complaints and the previous complaint about the toilet was over a year earlier when the bowl was reset and the flush pipe replaced. He denied evidence by Mrs Sheehan's daughter, Catherine, that it had carried out a repair job in June 1995 but that it was just a patch-up job.
Earlier, Mrs Sheehan's engineer, Mr Martin Foy, said he examined the stump of the bowl after the accident and found cracks which he believed were several years old. The cracks could have formed of their own accord or they may have been caused or made worse by a wobble in the base, he said.