A mother of four yesterday told the High Court yesterday she spent two days in intensive care in hospital after a toilet bowl collapsed beneath her.
Cork Corporation tenant Ms Mary Sheehan suffered a serious injury to her posterior when the toilet bowl broke beneath her at her local authority home in October 1995.
Ms Sheehan, from Ardmore Avenue, Knocknaheeny, Cork, was giving evidence in an appeal by Cork Corporation against a Circuit Court award of £21,800 to her.
"I sat on the toilet bowl - and the next thing I remember I was out in the Regional Hospital," said Mrs Sheehan. "The toilet went right up underneath me," she said, who spent two days in intensive care and 10 days in hospital and had to be tended by public health nurses at home for 10 months. She suffered a half-inch wound on her posterior and doctors were afraid the scar would become infected.
Ms Sheehan said she had complained to the corporation about the toilet before her accident, twice calling to its premises and asking it to send someone up to repair the toilet, which had been missing one screw for over two years and had leaks down the side for five to six weeks before the accident.
The corporation promised on both occasions to send somebody up the following morning but failed to do so, said Ms Sheehan, who denied a corporation plumber had repaired the toilet in August 1994. Ms Sheehan's husband, John, said the bathroom was "like a slaughterhouse" after his wife's accident and it took the ambulance men 20 minutes to get his wife out of the bathroom.
The case continues before Mrs Justice Laffoy today.