BRIAN Spelman, a solicitor who specialises in damages claims, recently justifying his line of work said "Employers should concentrate on making work places safer instead of," complaining about the legal profession. If there weren't accidents, there wouldn't be claim.
But the deplorable truth, as many an employer can wearily and weepingly assure, you, is that the absence of and accident does not mean there has equally been an absence a claim. The absence of cause has never prevented the more, creative of litigants from employing a perfectly honest solicitor to sue a perfectly honest body before a less than court, with results which have been less than perfect for the commonweal.
Another solicitor prominent in damages claims, John Schutte takes the same line as Brian Spelman. "A worker will only succeed in getting compensation from the employer where the employer is at fault."
Laws of the Land
Now what follows is not, an attack on the legal profession, and certainly not on the individuals named. The law is what we allow it to be. Solicitors and the courts work within the rule of law if we are to find fault, it should be with the law, and most of all, with the people, who make the law. This absolution is general it does not rule out the particular corrupt solicitor, the individual idiot judge (of which species we have more than one individual) or even the odd, corrupt journalist.
We all know the laws relating to the liability of property owners are insane that the burglar who stubs his toe can sue the homeowner he was attempting to relieve of his worldly goods. Brian Crowley, MEP for Munster, was, himself something of a pioneer in a similar regard. When he was a teenager, he fell off a roof where he had gone to retrieve a football, breaking his spine.
The court ruled the bank was negligent because Brian was able to get onto the roof. However sorry we might properly be over a tragedy which befell Brian and might have befallen any 16 year old, and certainly including me, I cannot see how the owner of every roof in Ireland can be legally expected to make it teenager proof or even little boy proof.
The same goes for building sites. Six year old Mark Gossan, whose ambition the court was solemnly told was to play for Liverpool, recently relieved Manor Park home builders of £10,000 after he fractured a toe while he and some friends were playing on concrete pipes on a building site, one of which, rolled over on his foot.
Great Ambitions
Serves you bloody well right, is what my father would have said if I went scrambling over building sites and hurt myself. I can not see him calling in a solicitor, nor even wondering about the blighted foot balling career of the six year old son who for the time being was going to find himself going to bed early. Anyway, I wanted to be a fireman.
The solicitors quoted above said if employers made their work places safe, they would not be obliged to pay out compensation. One can only wonder how the Department of Defence can be expected to make its workplace safe for the modern kind of soldier, of whom Sgt David Larkin seems to be a fair example. He broke an ankle while playing football, and sued the Minister for Defence, winning £12,500 in damages, after the department conceded liability. The court was told the sergeant missed a trip to the Lebanon because of the injuries. We can only be glad he did not go, soldiers have been known to experience worse things there than football injuries.
We read of Paula Newman, a hairdressing employee, who while getting a cup of coffee for a client spilt some coffee over herself and was scalded tariff for this was £1 7,500. Peter Mark, her employers of the time, might consider themselves lucky she didn't drop t«MDBO»h«MDNM»e cup. A dropped cup recently cost Bewley's £75,000.
Pauline Cregan was working as a waitress in the Mary Street, branch, clearing tables. The mug fell as she went to place a on a trolley. She sued Bewley's because she claimed she was made to work under excess pressure, causing her to drop the mug.
Her foot injury required seven stitches, and she testified that five years after the accidents her foot was in constant pain. In, addition she was unable to wear high heel shoes. No doubt she was in pain, and the issue here is not whether or not we should feel sorry for Pauline Cregan in her pain, for we should, but, whether the law which lays responsibility for the dropped cup on Bewley's is a good law. Do all cafes and restaurants not work under pressure of some kind or another? If one spills coffee on oneself while clearing' tables, is it reasonable that the employer is liable? Down that road is there not a land in which every misfortune which befalls you is the cause of productive, litigation against somebody else, and nothing is ever the fault of the person to whom it happens?
A Barren Land
And I can tell you one thing about that land. There will be no cherry trees blossoming in it, because they will have been dug up, just as Dublin has recently lost 800 perfectly good cherry trees. The Corporation removed them because so many people were suing it hollowing "falls" over the protruding roots, followed by the logical sequence lawsuits.
There will be no soldiers in that land either, because soldiering leads to too much compensation. There will be no cafes because too many waitresses spilled coffee over themselves. There will be no building sites, because too many small boys got on to them, rolling concrete blocks on to their toes. There will be no hairdressers because apprentice hairdressers scalded themselves getting coffee for clients.
There will be nothing in that land called Litigia. It will be an unproductive and sterile place even the solicitors will be thin, because since nobody does, anything no work is done, nothing is created and no accidents occur, there is nobody to sue the definition of a legal hell.