Kavanagh v Governors and Guardians of Rotunda Hospital

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 18 February 1959
• Date: 18 February 1959
• Court: Supreme Court

(S.C.)

Kavanagh

and

Rotunda Hospital

Onus of proof - Unexplained accident in course of employment -Whether presumption that accident arose out of employment - Workmen's Compensation Act, 1934, s. 15 (1) - Pleading - Summons averring cause of accident - Averment not denied in defence - Whether admitted by respondent.

On the hearing of an application in the Circuit Court for compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Acts, the applicant, a nurse at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, gave evidence that on the 30th January, 1957, she took her supper in a room on the ground floor and then proceeded as was her duty to go up the stairs to a ward on the first floor. She remembered going up the stairs, which adjoined a passenger-operated lift which she was entitled to use. The next thing she remembered was being on the first floor near the stairs and lift and finding her arm bleeding. There was no further evidence offered by either the applicant or the respondents as to the circumstances surrounding the accident, but it was agreed that her hand was amputated that night. The originating summons set out that the applicant's right hand was caught in the lift and mutilated. The defence was confined to a denial that the accident arose out of and in the course of the employment and to a denial of total incapacity. At the conclusion of the applicant's case, the trial Judge dismissed the applicant's claim on the grounds that there was no evidence as to how the accident occurred and therefore the applicant had not proved that it arose out of...