A prisoner has lost a €38,000 damages claim for injuries he received when he was shaving his cell mate's head with an electric clippers in his cell in Mountjoy jail.
Fourteen prison personnel, including a three-man escort, had to attend court for the case in which 15 witnesses were called.
Michael Murray, of St Mary's Place, Dorset Street, Dublin, told Judge Alison Lindsay in the Circuit Civil Court that he received an electric shock while shaving the head of a fellow cell mate at Mountjoy Prison in August 2002.
He said he was thrown against the wall and had lost consciousness.
Later during the night he was going from his bed to the toilet within his cell when he collapsed and again lost consciousness.
Murray told Mr Micheal Ó Scanaill, counsel for the governor of Mountjoy Prison and the Minister for Justice, that he suffered from headaches as a result of the injuries he received during both incidents in his cell.
He agreed with Mr Ó Scanaill he could make no medical connection between the headaches and the incident itself, nor could he medically link the electric shock incident with his collapse in his cell later that night.
Engineering expert Mr Tony Tennyson told the court Murray that would have received a fright rather than an electric shock. The inbuilt safety device in the electric clippers would have caused a break in the electric current.
Judge Lindsay dismissed Murray's claim on the basis that whatever defect might have been in the clippers would not have been ascertainable by the prison authorities prior to issuing the clippers to him.
She said that the authorities had a strict regulation that clippers for hair-cutting had to be used in corridors where the users of such devices could be kept under constant watch.
She awarded costs against Murray.