Firefighter settles court action over shoulder injury at nursing home

High Court reporters

A settlement has been reached in an action brought by a firefighter working with the Dublin ambulance service over a shoulder injury he claimed he suffered while pulling a trolley.

Mark Finnerty claimed he pulled his shoulder when the trolley hit an obstruction in a doorway of a basement entrance to a nursing home. The trolley was being guided out of the basement by Mr Finnerty and a colleague to urgently get a 96-year-old man who had gone into cardiac arrest into the ambulance for oxygen.

Mr Finnerty sued his employer, Dublin City Council, and Clontarf Private Nursing Home and Silverstream Healthcare Management Ltd, over the accident at the Sunnyside Nursing Home, Clontarf, Dublin, on March 7th, 2017. The defendants had denied his claims.

The case began on Thursday and on Friday, David McGrath SC, for Mr Finnerty, said the matter had been settled and he sought an order for costs in favour of his client against the nursing home defendants only.

Ms Justice Carmel Stewart, who on Thursday advised the parties to discuss the matter overnight, congratulated them on the settlement and struck out the case.

The court heard the nursing home comprises three joined-over-basement Victorian houses and access to it is via a ramp with a number of turns on it.

While the call-out to the nursing home was initially not a cardiac call, after the patient was brought down in a lift on a wheelchair from the third floor, he was no longer breathing and was slumped in the chair. He was taken to the ambulance, but died later in hospital.

Mr Finnerty, of Balgriffin Park, Hole in the Wall Road, Dublin 13, claimed he suffered a tear in his right shoulder muscle.

He claimed the city council failed, among other things, to provide a safe place of work or to train him properly in the use of the trolley.

The nursing home allegedly failed to provide a safe means of bringing the patient out to the ambulance or to carry out a reasonable risk assessment of the property.

Both defendants denied the claims while the city council claimed any liability was with the nursing home because of the nature of the access.

The nursing home operators said the council failed to provide proper training as Mr Finnerty did not observe the correct procedures for using the trolley in the circumstances he found himself in.