“Road rage” personal injuries claim dismissed Carr v Olas (2012) IEHC 59 (High Court, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, March 15th, 2012)
High Court dismisses personal injuries claim arising from accident triggered by plaintiff’s “road rage”.
The plaintiff had been travelling on his motorcycle and narrowly avoided a collision with the defendant at a roundabout. An exchange of insults ensued, after which, the plaintiff decided to pursue the defendant.
The evidence suggested that when he caught up with him, he banged on the driver’s car window. The defendant swerved into the path of the plaintiff who was caused to lose control and travel into the path of a second car travelling in the opposite direction. The plaintiff suffered injuries including the permanent loss of use of one arm and sought damages from the defendant.
The court considered, inter alia, the doctrine of ex turpi causa non oritur actio (“from a dishonourable cause, an action does not arise”). This had been modified by section 57(1) of the Civil Liability Act 1961, which provided: “It shall not be a defence in an action of tort merely to show that the plaintiff is in breach of the civil or criminal law.”
The court also examined section 13 of the Rules of the Road, which concerned “Road Rage and Aggressive Driving”. The court accepted that the defendant’s swerve was “the product of an instinctive reaction, prompted by a natural recoil from the banging on the window” and dismissed the plaintiff’s claim.
Taxing master deliberately departed from High Court jurisprudence Bourbon v Ward (2012) IEHC 30 (High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, February 17th, 2012)
High Court allows appeal from ruling of taxing master and remits matter for proper determination of fees charged by plaintiff’s solicitor in settled personal injuries claim.
A personal injuries claim had been settled for €800,000, and the plaintiff’s costs were referred to the taxing master for assessment. The plaintiff’s solicitor had sought an instruction fee of €240,000, but had not kept contemporaneous time records over the 15 years it took for the case to come to hearing. The defendant submitted that €135,000 was a fair valuation of the work in the absence of such records.
The taxing master assessed the instruction fee at €212,000, based on an estimated “1.77 hrs per week x 40 weeks x 15 years x €200.00 per hour”.
He wrote: “The Defendants’ use of the dicta in (Cafolla v Kilkenny (2010) IEHC 24) and (C.D. v. Minister for Health (2008) IEHC 299) for critical purposes is in my view inappropriate . . . To apportion time as suggested in both cases is pure guesswork, is difficult to comprehend and shows a complete lack of understanding of the current taxation process.”
The defendant appealed to the High Court, which remitted the matter to the Taxing Master, saying: “The Taxing Master thus quite deliberately and impermissibly departed from the established jurisprudence of the High Court in his overall approach to this taxation . . . the ex post facto nature of the Taxing Master’s method of calculating the instruction fee provides the clearest illustration of his departure from approved principles [that] led in this case to a method of assessment which defies logic and reason.”
The matter was remitted to the taxing master for “a proper determination of the general instruction fee”.
These summaries were compiled by Mark Tottenham BL, of the website staredecisishibernia.com