A MAN who suffered serious head injuries after horses which had wandered on to the road collided with his van has been awarded more than €337,000 in damages at the High Court.
John O’Brien (58) suffered severe injuries described as life-threatening as a result of the collision which occurred on the N6 road about 7km from Athlone at about 8pm on October 21st 1998.
Mr O’Brien, a carpenter of Fardrum, Athlone, Co Westmeath, sued Francis Derwin jnr, Moate Road, Athlone, and the estate of the late Francis Derwin snr, Auburn, Dublin Road, Athlone, for negligence in allegedly failing to control the horses. Yesterday, Mr Justice Peter Charleton said he was satisfied the defendants, who were involved in buying and selling horses, had been negligent and he awarded Mr O’Brien €337,394 damages, plus costs.
The defendants, who denied the claims, had argued the horses involved in the incident were not theirs and had pleaded contributory negligence by Mr O’Brien.
In his judgment, the judge said the horses involved in the incident, and other horses, were kept at lands of Mr Derwin jnr and were probably owned by his late father.
The lands were inadequately fenced and some horses left the land around dusk on October 21st, 1998. The incident occurred while Mr O’Brien was driving his son home and he had no time to react, the judge said. The windscreen of his van came in after it collided with the animals and it halted after crashing into a fence post. Both occupants were covered in blood and Mr O’Brien was seriously injured.
One horse was killed and another injured. A number of witnesses had seen up to 10 horses wandering the road on the date in question but, apart from the horses involved in the incident, the others disappeared shortly afterwards and the gardaí never found them.
The judge said it was “clear that the owners of these horses spirited them away quickly after the incident as they were neither seen again, nor found wandering the next day”. The judge said he had walked all the locations involved in the case. He said the defendants owned lands about 1.5km from where the incident occurred, where they kept horses. He could not accept evidence from Jim Derwin, Mr Derwin jnr’s brother, who said their horses “never came out” of the field and every fence was in order.
The judge accepted evidence from another man who said he examined the field where horses were kept and noticed that a fence was down. No horses were there at the time. Given the condition of the fencing, there “was no doubt that a group of horses could easily stride away from their captivity”, the judge said.