A soldier who was in the Army Ranger unit when he dislocated his ankle in his first parachute jump has been awarded €80,000 damages by the High Court.
Mr Justice Bernard Barton said Cpl Gerard Kirby is a career solider who considers the Army to be his life and whose disappointment at being unable to serve as a front line soldier due to his injuries was to be taken into account in assessing damages.
Cpl Kirby is now stationed in Cork in a different section of the Defence Forces. He fractured his ankle and later needed surgery when he injured it in his first parachute jump at the Curragh Camp while training in July 2010.
He sued the Minister for Defence, Ireland and the Attorney General.
Liability was denied.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Barton said notwithstanding the soldier was warned about, and had accepted, the risks involved when he enrolled on the training course offered by the Army Parachute Training School, he was entitled to expect he would be provided with such equipment, information, instructions and training as was reasonable and practicable to enable him perform his first parachute jump safely.
The soldier was most unfortunate, having jumped from the helicopter, to find himself in a sudden emergency for which he was not responsible but from which he sought to extricate himself in accordance with the training he had received, he said.
He was the first of six soldiers to jump from the helicopter into the drop zone north of the Curragh Camp on July 26th, 2010.
He made an uneventful exit from the aircraft, started to count and felt a lift as the canopy began to deploy but the chute failed to open fully and the parachute lines were twisted, the judge said.
“Apart from a complete chute opening failure, the situation could hardly have been more desperate, the speed of descent was far too fast and unless immediate action was taken he faced imminent death or extremely serious injuries.” Cpl Kirby began to kick with his legs and deployed his reserve chute, he said.
His case was failures to provide lateral drift training and to utilise the talk down system caused the accident.
The essence of the Defence case was the parachute training course had been tried and tested by the Army and the solider was instructed, trained in, and had practised the parachute landing roll and was responsible for putting his training into practice.
It was also argued a Safety Management Audit Investigation Report stated the soldier adopted the wrong body position and his legs were open and kicking on impact.
The judge said Cpl Kirby was emphatic, as he descended, he heard no instructions on how to land from anybody on ground.
No satisfactory explanation was given why there was no reference to parachute landing roll instructions in the investigation statements and reports after the accident, he held.
He accepted Cpl Kirby’s evidence, following the instruction to jump and confirmatory tap on his helmet, the next communication he heard was when he was being attended to on the ground.
The failure to provide lateral drift training and an effective talk down system constituted negligence on the part of the defendants, he ruled.
There was no contributory negligence on behalf of the soldier who found himself in an “unusual and unexpected predicament”.
The judge granted a stay on the award in the event of an appeal providing €60,000 was paid out immediately.
