Sir, - Kevin Myers's article of (August 14th) is typical of much, of the media comment about personal injury litigation in this country. It lacks balance and it appears to be written almost entirely from the perspective of the employer or occupier of premises. The plain fact of the matter is that no injured person can succeed before a court in obtaining compensation for injuries sustained without first and foremost establishing negligence on the part of either the employer or the occupier of premises which gives rise to the occurrences of an accident, and hence the injury to the plaintiff.
Employers employ workers for one purpose only and that is to make a profit from their labour. This is perfectly reasonable, but with that profit there is imposed on the employer a duty to take reasonable care for the safety and welfare of the employee, coupled with a duty not to expose the employee to unreasonable dangers in the workplace. We can never expect a situation to evolve where accidents will no longer occur, but the constant harping at employees who bring claims for damages serves only to distract from the wholly inadequate, haphazard and lazy attitude, of many employers to the issue of safety.
I have had personal experienced of employees who have lost limbs as a result of employers failure to provide simple guarding mechanisms on machines. Yet there is little, if any, comment about issues of safety in work carried in any of the national media, which continue to focus on soft targets; such as unfortunate workers injured through no fault of their own, and more importantly, through the fault of their employers.
The particular examples given by Mr Myers make interesting reading, but I can assure him that those cases do not represent a fair reflection of the state of the law in relation to negligence. On many occasions, it is necessary to advise an employee that he has no case, as he cannot establish liability against his employer. As to Dublin Corporation's cherry trees, any keen gardener will tell Mr Myers that a mature cherry tree is quite capable of uprooting a footpath and creating a dangerous trip hazard. Yours, etc.,
Corner House.
Main Street, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.