A WOMAN enjoying an evening swim was jumped on in the pool and injured, a court was told. Mrs Anne Heffernan, St Bernard's Place, Fermoy, Co Cork, sued the urban district council for damages in the High Court in Cork in a case which took almost three days.
She was awarded £42,000 damages by Mr Justice Michael, Moriarty yesterday.
Mrs Heffernan, the mother of four teenage children, said that, in April, 1989, she went swimming in Fermoy pool with her sister and her niece jumping in and splashing around with two girls.
She saw no lifeguard and usually when there was behaviour of this kind a whistle would be blown and the person told to stop. This did not happen. She saw the lifeguard in the office. She swam a length, stopped to talk to her niece and then started to swim again.
"I had just turned when this young boy jumped on top of me. I got an awful blow to the left side of my face. I got a terrible fright and I was afraid to keep swimming. I was hurt and I got out of the pool," said Mrs Heffernan.
Her niece, Ms Rachel Gahan, said she was in the deep end when she saw "a bloke charging out of, the men's room and jumping into the pool without looking". She described him as "a messer".
She saw him jump straight in on top of her aunt. There was no lifeguard so she swam to her aunt and took her to the side of the pool.
Her aunt acted and looked as if she was drunk holding her jaw and mumbling, looking pale and shocked. All she wanted to do was go home and they did that without making a complaint.
Ms Fiona Morrison, a lifeguard, said there were always two life guards at the pool and if the accident did happen she would have seen it. She could only conclude that it could not have happened.
Judge Moriarty said he had sympathy with the defendants but Mrs Heffernan and her family were paying customers at the pool which had inherent dangers.
Sudden emergencies could arise and there was a multiplicity of possibilities with a potential for catastrophe. The defendants had to be vigilant but they could not anticipate every situation.
Mrs Heffernan was an honest and reliable witness who did her best to recount the incident.
There was a mark of truth about the evidence presented by the family and he was satisfied the defendants operated a generally satisfactory system, though in this instance they may have relaxed their guard.