€275,000 awarded over injury in Waterford contact lens factory

A woman who suffered an injury to her right shoulder and neck as a result of a metal container falling from a height from a defective roller trolley in a contact lens factory has been awarded €275,703.

Margaret Reid (62), a mother of four from Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny, sued Valeant Pharmaceuticals Ireland over the accident at its Bausch and Lomb factory in Waterford on May 30, 2015.

Valeant denied negligence and argued she had exaggerated and misstated her injuries.

The High Court heard Ms Reid’s job as an automonomer operator was to run machines, which make contact lenses in the injection moulding department.

She was taking blocks of cassettes of lens moulds, known as “towers”, from a series of roller tracks on a large, wheeled trolley when a tower suddenly fell from one of the upper levels off the rack and struck her forcibly on the right shoulder.

She told the court that she was a busy and active person before the accident but her injuries affected her independence. She had to ask somebody to drive her everywhere as she “drives very little” and also said her physical injuries impacted her mental health.

In a judgment published this week, Mr Justice Mícheál P O’Higgins found the defendant was liable for the accident.

He accepted expert evidence on Ms Reid’s part that Valeant should have taken practical and proactive steps to reduce the risk of possible failure of safety stoppers on the trolley involved.

The judge said medical evidence stated it appeared she developed a mechanical musculoskeletal type of injury and, in addition, developed right-sided neuropathic pain for which she required surgery. Complications manifested themselves after the surgery and it transpired that she had vocal cord palsy, affecting her voice.

The judge said Ms Reid’s lawyers argued that damages should lie in the region of €325,000 to €375,000.

He said this submission did not take into account or address sufficiently a private investigator’s video footage showing Ms Reid carrying out certain tasks which she had told doctors she was unable to do or had difficulty doing since the accident.

“Having reviewed the video footage a number of times myself and having heard the evidence as to what the plaintiff told various medics during the period of her injuries, I am satisfied that the plaintiff’s perception of her injuries became flawed and that she over-stated the extent of her injuries in certain important respects,” he said.

However, this was not a situation where the justice of the case required a dismissal of the action or a near – total fractioning of general damages.

He was satisfied she was an honest witness who at all times sought to give an accurate and fair account of her injuries. She subjectively believed that her functional limitations were as bad as she described them to be in her consultations with doctors, he said.

It was his view, however, that her perception of her injuries and symptoms became muddled and distorted and this caused her to amplify her symptoms in her mind.

It was “abundantly clear” from the medical evidence that she was not a “good candidate” for an accident such as this – both from a physical injury and psychological point of view, he said.

The court, he said, should give considerable weight to the fact that over the years since her accident, she spent some €50,000 paying privately for medical treatment, as she did not have health insurance or a medical card, to help get herself better and to help bring to an end her symptoms of chronic pain.

He said this was money she could ill-afford and it was unlikely that she would have spent her family’s hard-earned money to address medical problems that she genuinely didn’t feel she had.

Taking all factors into account, and viewing matters in the round, the judge said she suffered very significant injury as a result of the accident and for a long number of years her injuries and symptoms impacted her daily enjoyment of life. It was therefore a case that warrants “significant compensation”, he said.

She was entitled to general damages of €225,000 and the agreed special damages (for medical bills) of €50,703, making a total award of €275,703.