The Court of Appeal (CoA) has overturned a €60,201 award to a bus driver who allegedly slipped on black ice at the top of staircase in a common area of his apartment block.
Shakur Ahmed (54), of Castlegrange Square, Clondalkin, Dublin, fractured his elbow when he fell down a flight of stairs as he was leaving for work at 5.15am on November 21st, 2016.
The court said a claim that the complex’s management company had an obligation to grit pedestrian common areas in anticipation of adverse weather would place “an unreasonably burdensome duty on occupiers” of premises.
Mr Ahmed claimed Castlegrange Management Co Ltd and Castlegrange Square Management Co Ltd, with registered offices at Dunboyne Business Park, Co Meath, had a duty under sections 3 and 4 of the Occupiers Liability Act to ensure a person did not suffer injury.
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He claimed the defendants were negligent in the maintenance, upkeep and repair of the landing and stairs including by failing to grit the surface to deal with black ice and to warn by signage of the danger.
He also claimed that a mat or other material would have reduced the risk of slipping as there was no grip-providing “nosing” at the edge of the first three steps on the stairs. The court heard that a light above his apartment door, which Mr Ahmed accepted he was responsible for, had blown a week before the accident.
He suffered a displaced comminuted fracture of the left elbow in the accident and was off work for two months.
The claims were denied by the defendants.
Public pathway
The now retired High Court judge Bronagh O’Hanlon previously awarded Mr Ahmed €60,201 after finding that the area where the accident occurred was a public pathway that fell within the control of the defendants and the effect of gritting would have averted the accident. If nosings on the steps had been in place and in proper condition, they would have assisted in breaking his fall, she said.
Castlegrange appealed the High Court decision.
Mr Justice Seamus Noonan, on behalf of the three-judge CoA, on Wednesday said the High Court judge’s conclusion that the defendants had a duty to grit the landing “cannot be permitted to stand”. He allowed the appeal and dismissed Mr Ahmed’s claim.
“It seems to me impossible for the (High Court) judge to have legitimately concluded that compliance with their duty to take reasonable care required the defendants to constantly monitor weather conditions and, if ice was anticipated, provide gritting to the common areas,” he said.
“It was perhaps worth observing that if the provision of such gritting was such an obvious measure that ought to have been employed by any reasonable management company, it is surprising to say the least that it never occurred to the plaintiff’s legal team to plead it.”
What had in fact been pleaded, and it was without the benefit of an engineer’s report, was that there should have been matting on the landing, he said.
Mr Justice Noonan said Mr Ahmed had lived in the apartment since 2002 and was “intimately familiar with the locus of the accident”. He said Mr Ahmed knew the weather had been extremely cold on the previous day and was able to see as he emerged from his apartment that the ground was wet and there was a reasonable or likely chance of ice being on the landing.
“I cannot see in such circumstances how he could be regarded as other than guilty of a very high degree of contributory negligence, quite possibly to the extent of 100 per cent as submitted by the defendants.”