A former guardian loses justice in court for his accident on school grounds

By Ann O & # 39; Loughlin

A former school guard lost an action in the High Court following an accident in which his bike collided with a car driven by a colleague in the school compound.

Vincent O 'Mahoney (68), who retired from the Dungarvan Adult Education Center in Waterford, where the accident occurred, continued Nicola McCarthy Hanlon, coordinator of literacy at the center, for the accident of April 23, 2012.

He claimed that the accident was caused by Ms. Carthy's negligence in controlling or driving her car. He also sued Waterford and the Wexford Board of Education and Training for breach of his duty or breach of his employment contract for failing to insure his safety while he was in the premises .

The requests were refused.

The court heard that the collision had made him land heavily on the shoulder and that he had been diagnosed later of a tear in the rotator cuff tensioner. Two months later, he underwent surgery which forced him to hold his left arm under the harness for six weeks and was unemployed for about eight months after the accident. The operation has been successful and he does not usually suffer but suffers from shoulder inflammation from time to time.

Mr. O. Mahoney stated that the front wheel of his motorcycle protruded from a pedestrian walkway on the ground when the front wheel arch of Ms. McCarthy's car took a look at her left thigh, which caused him to lose balance and fell against the vehicle wing before tipping against a concrete sidewalk.

Judge David Keane, dismissing his case, stated that he could not accept Mr. O. Mahoney's thesis that he was allowed to use the pedestrian pathway as a bicycle path because he was frequently used to this way.

The trail was directly accessible only by a public trail and cycling is expressly prohibited by law, said the judge. The narrowness of pedestrian entry and the nature of the trail have confirmed the lack of attention and care ", or even the absolute danger," implied in treating it as a designated bike path .

Even if this were not the case, the immediate cause of the accident remains the fact that Mr. O. Mahoney did not stop or dismount, he said.

He did not accept a hedge creating a blind spot.

He accepted testimony from undisputed experts from the Board of Education and Training that a pedestrian or walking cyclist had enough time to stop at the school. time for any traffic using the path of access to the school grounds.

He did not admit that the commission had failed to ensure that pedestrians and vehicles could safely travel on the scene. There was no breach of health and safety regulations.

The judge also did not agree that Ms. McCarthy's vehicle was traveling too fast.

In all the circumstances, he concluded that Mr. O'Mahoney failed to account for negligence against Ms. McCarthy or the Board.