A former prisoner in Mountjoy who cut his right buttock on a defective bunk bed while going to use the toilet in the middle of the night has been awarded €40,000 damages against the Minister for Justice.
However, Judge Terence O’Sullivan said Stephen Doyle had weeks earlier scratched his hand on the jagged remains of a safety bar on his top bunk and held him one fifth responsible for his hip injury on the basis of contributory negligence, reducing the award to €32,000.
Doyle, a 34-year-old tree surgeon of Drumheath Drive, Ladyswell, Mulhuddart, Dublin, told the Circuit Civil Court that in December 2011 he was sharing Cell 2 in Block A3 of Mountjoy Prison with his brother, Andy Doyle, when the incident occurred. The court was not told why the brothers were in prison at the time.
Andrew J King, counsel for Mr Doyle, said during an outline of the case that his client had got up in the night to use the toilet bowl at the bottom of his bed and as he scrambled out of his top bunk caught his buttock on a jagged piece of metal. It was the remains of safety bars which had been removed from the bed prior to Mr Doyle entering prison.
Mr King, who appeared with Mark Killilea Solicitors, told Judge O’Sullivan that his client had bled profusely and had been given first aid before being removed to Beaumont Hospital where nine stitches had been inserted in a gash to his right buttock.
“When I returned from the hospital the old double bunk bed had been replaced with a completely new bunk bed,” Mr Doyle told the court.
Mr King said the incident had happened 11 years ago when Mr Doyle was in his early twenties and it was believed the defective bed had been scrapped in the meantime. There were no pictures of the jagged surface that had caused the injury.
A senior prison officer said all cells and beds were inspected daily and to his knowledge there had been no complaints about the bed in Mr Doyle’s cell. Inspections also included tests of windows and bars and a search for any item that could be transformed into a weapon.
There had been no inspection of the bed immediately after the incident.
Judge O’Sullivan said he was satisfied the evidence given by Mr Doyle and prison officers was truthful. Mr Doyle had clearly been significantly injured and medical reports of his injury considered his injury to have been consistent with his account of what had happened.
Awarding Doyle damages of €40,000 for personal injury, the judge said that because of his earlier hand injury he ought to have known of a problem with his bed and held him a fifth responsible for his injury. The court was satisfied the bed had subsequently been removed.