A 16-YEAR-OLD boy who was seriously injured in an incident in which his father drove an uninsured car was awarded €1.25 million in damages at the High Court yesterday.
The judge who made the award criticised the boy’s family for their “exaggerated evidence and probably greed” in the manner in which they had dealt with the case.
Martin Joseph Maughan suffered a serious brain injury in an incident when he was a back-seat passenger in a car that hit a wall at Wainsfort Road, Terenure, Dublin, on February 15th, 1998, when he was five years old.
He sued his father, also Martin, with an address at the Caravan Site, Ballymount Road Industrial Estate, Dublin, and the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland (MIBI), through his grandfather and friend John McDonagh. Wardship proceedings will take place at a later date.
Making the €1.25 million award yesterday, Mr Justice Michael Hanna said the youth’s “good claim for some degree of dependency had been utterly undermined by what I can only say is exaggerated evidence and probably greed on the part of the plaintiff’s family”.
The judge said he was not going to blame Martin Joseph for that. He had been seriously injured and was entitled to be appropriately compensated, in spite of evidence given on his behalf.
The judge said the father had lied about the fact that he had allowed Martin Joseph to drive uninsured from Limerick, where they live, to attend a medical examination in the run-up to the High Court case.
It was, said the judge, “simply mind boggling in the level of irresponsibility which that displayed”.
The father had gone to Limerick without leave of the court during the hearing, having given evidence, and left Martin Joseph, who is highly dependent, effectively on his own.
The judge criticised evidence given by Martin Joseph’s mother, who lives in Clonakilty, Cork.
“I should point out,” the judge said, “that she began by saying she had five children, but in cross-examination said she had seven, so I don’t know where to leave her evidence.” He found deeply depressing the evidence of the boy’s sister, who seemed to treat “as some kind of ‘boy’s toy’ the savage and evil activity known euphemistically as ‘joy riding’ ”.
Even without a brain injury, the judge said, Martin is in a “highly disadvantaged position” because of his circumstances, including the family constantly moving around and a highly fractured education which ended when he was about 12.
Mr Justice Hanna was satisfied Martin Joseph was able to look after himself and to socialise in Limerick. Hopefully he would pursue his aim of securing vocational training that would offer some prospect of employment.
He would require some form of adult presence or mentor, who was sadly lacking to date. The judge granted a stay on his order, pending appeal, on the basis that €500,000 is paid into court.
