Robert Mullins v The Irish Prison Service, The Minister for Justice and Equality, and Ireland
Jurisdiction | Ireland |
Judge | Mr Justice Max Barrett,Ms. Justice Donnelly,Mr. Justice Woulfe |
Judgment Date | 29 November 2021 |
Neutral Citation | [2021] IECA 318 |
Court | Court of Appeal (Ireland) |
Docket Number | Record No. 2018/477 |
[2021] IECA 318
Woulfe J.
Donnelly J.
Barrett J.
Record No. 2018/477
THE COURT OF APPEAL
Personal injuries – Statute barred – Limitation – Appellant appealing against the judgment and order of the High Court finding that the appellant’s claim was statute barred – Whether the trial judge erred in finding that the appellant knew as of the date of the accident that he had sustained a significant injury
Facts: The plaintiff/appellant, Mr Mullins, was a prison officer and claimed to have suffered personal injuries as a result of an incident at work in Cloverhill Prison on the 8th January, 2013, which he alleged were caused by the negligence and breach of duty of the defendants/respondents, the Irish Prison Service, the Minister for Justice and Equality and Ireland, and/or their servants or agents. The plaintiff appealed against the judgment of the High Court (Binchy J) and the order made in pursuance thereof on the 24th July, 2018. By that order, the trial judge found that the plaintiff’s claim was statute barred and ordered that his claim be dismissed, with no order as to the costs of the proceedings. The plaintiff filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal on the 9th May, 2019, and set out five grounds of appeal. The first ground was that the trial judge relied solely upon s. 2(1) and (2) of the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act 1991 when clearly at law s. 2(3)(a) applied to his case. Further grounds advanced were that the trial judge miscalculated the time allowed under the 1991 Act, and in particular failed to apply the six month stay on proceedings afforded by the Personal Injuries Assessment Board in the issuing of their letter of authorisation to pursue legal action (i.e. by s. 50 of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003). In the respondent’s notice filed on the 28th June, 2019, the defendants pleaded that the trial judge was correct in finding as of fact that the plaintiff was aware of the significance of the injury as of the date of the accident, and that the date of knowledge was not found to be October, 2013, but was found to be in or around the 8th January, 2013.
Held by Woulfe J that the trial judge erred in finding that the plaintiff knew as of the date of the accident that he had sustained a significant injury. As regards his alternative finding that the date of knowledge was when his condition worsened and he had difficulty walking, Woulfe J was satisfied that such a finding could be viewed as amply supported by credible evidence, subject to the variation that the date in question was August/October, 2014 and not October, 2013. Accordingly, Woulfe J held that the plaintiff’s appeal from the decision of the High Court should be allowed. In the light of the degree of ambiguity and some confusion surrounding the findings made by the trial judge, Woulfe J held that the limitation issue should be remitted back to the High Court to be re-heard, but as part of a unitary trial.
Woulfe J’s provisional view was that as the appellant had been entirely successful in the appeal, he was entitled to his costs of the appeal and of the proceedings in the Court below.
Appeal allowed.
JUDGMENT of Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered on 29 th November 2021 .
. I respectfully adopt the trial judge's description of the applicable facts.
. The key legal question for the trial judge was essentially identified at paras.11 and 12 of his judgment: when did Mr Mullins know his alleged injury was significant for the purposes of s.2 of the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act 1991?
. In his judgment, the trial judge (i) appears to indicate 8 January 2013 as a possible date of knowledge, (ii) certainly indicates sometime in October 2013 as a possible outside date. Save in an extreme case (such as loss of limb) a person cannot generally know on the date of injury that an injury is significant for the purposes of s.2; factually, this is not an extreme case. The October 2013 date involves a misunderstanding by the trial judge of the factual evidence before him in which October 2014 was at play. As both dates referenced by the trial judge were necessarily wrong for the reasons just stated, this matter falls to be remitted to the High Court.
. To my mind, the foregoing suffices to dispense with this appeal. This is not a case where the trial judge misinterpreted the meaning of the word “ significant” in s.2 but one where the date/s he elected upon could not, for the reasons stated above, be correct.
JUDGMENT of Ms. Justice Donnelly delivered on the 29 th day of November, 2021
. The general background to this appeal has been set out in the judgment of Woulfe J. which I have had the opportunity to read prior to delivery. I gratefully accept the basic facts which he sets out therein. As I am in agreement with him that the appeal ought to be allowed and the issue of whether the plaintiff's case is statute barred remitted to the High Court for determination, I am of the view that it is preferable not to draw any inferences from the basic facts upon which there is no dispute. Similarly, extensive commentary on the adequacy or inadequacy of the evidence before the motion judge is also, in my view, not warranted; save to say that I do not accept that there was no evidence before the High Court upon which the motion judge could have made the decision he made. In those circumstances, what I will do in the course of this short judgment is to indicate in broad terms how, as a matter of law, a trial judge ought to approach the assessment of whether the plaintiff had knowledge (actual or constructive) that his injury was significant.
. For the purpose of clarity, I will repeat the following relevant dates:
8 January 2013 | Date of incident |
10 September 2015 | Date of application to the Personal Injuries Authorisation Board (“PIAB”) |
11 March 2016 | Date of issue of the Plenary Summons (within 6 months of the authorisation from PIAB) |
. If the date of accrual of the accident was the date of the accident (as posited by the defendants), the plaintiff was out of time as of the date of the application to PIAB unless he could establish that his date of knowledge that he was injured or that the injury in question was significant was within the permitted two year statutory period prior to issuing proceedings (a period permitted to be increased by virtue of his application to PIAB). On the agreed evidence, there can be no doubt but that on the date of the accident the plaintiff had suffered a provable personal injury i.e. the exacerbation of his back injury, which was capable of attracting compensation. As I discuss later, the plaintiff is asserting however that the injury of which he complains was not an exacerbation of that back injury but was a completely separate one, knowledge of which only came to him well within the two years prior to issue of these proceedings. Regardless of whether this was an exacerbation or otherwise of his back injury, the plaintiff said in evidence in the High Court and repeated in submissions, that he did not know his injury was significant until (at a minimum) he was told he needed surgery on his back.
. It is unfortunate that the motion judge appears to have erred when he said that even if the date of knowledge of the plaintiff that his injury was significant was October 2013 then his case was statute barred. From reading the transcript of evidence, it is arguable that there were two factual errors. Arguably there was an error by the motion judge when he said that the plaintiff said he could not walk by October 2013. The interpretation I took from the transcript (see reference to the evidence at para. 22 of the judgment of Woulfe J.) is that the October to which the plaintiff was referring was October 2014. It is to the plaintiff's credit that when asked about this at the appeal, he openly and frankly accepted that he might have taken annual leave in 2013 because of flare ups because he was trying to keep his sick leave to a minimum. Nonetheless, he clarified that the time when he could not walk was in August 2014.
. The second and more important error for the purpose of this appeal was that, even if the date of knowledge was October 2013, the case was not statute barred. The plaintiff had issued the plenary summons within 6 months of the authorisation from PIAB and he had applied to PIAB on the 10 th September, 2015 i.e. within 2 years of a date of knowledge in October 2013.
. The defendants accept that there was an error in the motion judge's finding that based on a date of knowledge of October 2013 the plaintiff's case was statute barred. The defendants have argued however, that on another view of the judgment, the motion judge found as a fact that the date of knowledge was the date of the accident thus rendering the case statute barred.
. On reading the High Court judgment, the relevant parts of which are cited in the judgment of Woulfe J., I am not clear that the motion judge did in fact find the date of the accident to be the date of knowledge for the purpose of the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act, 1991 (hereinafter, “the Act of 1991”). While the motion judge referred to the date of the accident as the date of knowledge at an earlier point in his judgment, he appears to equivocate in his final conclusion when he stated he was satisfied:-
“that the plaintiff had the necessary knowledge, or must be deemed to have the necessary knowledge, for the purposes of s.2 of the Act of 1991, no later than October, 2013, when he said he was unable to walk because of his discomfort”. ( Emphasis added).
. As this Court is clear that there was an error in the motion judge's conclusion that the proceedings were...
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