A JUDGE has described the sight of a child crying in the witness box as "simply deplorable" and indicative of the "litigious-hungry society" of today.
Judge James Carroll said Jennifer Delaney (13) was very unhappy and he felt the personal injuries action instigated on her behalf by her mother, Deirdre, should have been abandoned when the girl broke down in tears in the witness box.
"I say that without any criticism whatsoever of her counsel and solicitor who were bound to act on the instructions they received from Mrs Delaney," Judge Carroll said.
The girl fractured her wrists while practising Olympic handball defence tactics with other girls in the exercise hall at St Killian's Senior School, Tallaght, Dublin
A former Tipperary hurling captain and 1989 all-Ireland medal winner against Antrim, Mr Richard Stakelum, said he was in charge of the training session when the accident happened two years ago.
He told Mr Finbarr Fox, counsel for the school, that a number of girls lined up against each other and jogged forwards and backwards as they practised defensive moves. Jennifer had fallen when she bumped into another girl behind her.
A sports consultant, Mr Joe Lennon, who won three all-Ireland football medals with Co Down in the 1960s and now runs Northern" Recreation Consultants in Co Meath, said he felt no prudent parent would have considered it a dangerous exercise.
He told Mr Fox very few exercises would be permitted in schools at all if teachers first had to sit down and consider what, if any, accidents might occur as a result of children undertaking them.
The judge dismissed the £30,000 action.