A man has lost his High Court action seeking damages for fracturing his elbow during a PE class relay race when he was 15.
Kelvin O’Brien (24) sued Waterford and Wexford Eduction and Training Board over an alleged incident in January 2015 at Coláiste an Átha in Kilmuckridge, Gorey, Co Wexford.
In a ruling published this week, Ms Justice Marguerite Bolger said she was satisfied Mr O’Brien did not establish negligence or any actionable lack of care by the defendant in the organisation of the PE class.
Mr O’Brien, of Ballyadam, Kilmuckridge, claimed he fractured his elbow when, during a sprint, he stumbled approaching the gym hall wall. He alleged he remembers hitting the wall and waking up.
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His teacher implemented a concussion protocol, but there were no concussion symptoms or pain at the time. However, he later went to hospital with pain in his elbow and underwent two surgeries for an elbow fracture and remained as an inpatient for three days.
Mr O’Brien’s version of events was corroborated by a former classmate, the judge said.
The PE teacher told the court Mr O’Brien was sprinting to a cone, which he was to run around, and lost his balance before turning. He disputed that Mr O’Brien had collided with another boy or that students were to sprint to the wall. He said the turning point in the race had to be a reasonable distance from the wall.
Ms Justice Bolger preferred the reliability of the defendants’ version, in particular the recollection of the PE teacher, who she found to be a reliable and credible witness.
His explanation for the layout of the hall for the racing exercise “made sense” not just for reducing or removing the risk of a person colliding with the wall, but also for optimising time and space to ensure all 24 students engaged in physical activity during the session, she said.
Mr O’Brien claimed the PE teacher was in breach of his duty of care in failing to expressly instruct him not to run into the wall. The teacher did not claim to have given such an instruction but said he did explain where the students were to start in the race, where to turn and where to rejoin the line.
Ms Justice Bolger said the teacher “was not required to furnish an express instruction to the 15-year-old plaintiff not to run into the wall, which was a distance from the designated start/end cone”.
Had the cones been as close to the wall as Mr O’Brien recalls, it “may well have been prudent” for the teacher to say not to run into it, but, the judge said, “with or without that instruction, such a layout without a run-off area would have been unsafe and a foreseeable risk”.
The judge dismissed the claim.
