A creche manager is entitled to almost €51,000 damages and her legal costs over an “absolutely unacceptable” workplace assault on her by a parent who headbutted her, the High Court has ruled.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell said the assault happened in early 2012 when the manager prevented the man, a qualified lawyer who is estranged from the child’s mother, from collecting their child.
The manager said the child’s mother had instructed her that the child was not to be collected by the man. After she was alerted he was in the creche room where his child was, the manager said he told her he was not leaving without his child and pushed her twice in the chest before she manoeuvred him into the corridor outside, with the child remaining in the room.
The situation escalated, he accused her of being “in cahoots” with the child’s mother and she told a staff member to call gardaí, the manager said.
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He banged on her arm trying to dislodge her hand from the door handle, and tried to bite her in her face and arm, she said. He told her: “I’m going to hurt you” and headbutted her in the face, she said. He tripped and fell trying to get into the room again, she said, and gardaí arrived and took him away.
The man’s position was the assault did not occur as described and the manager was essentially being untruthful in her account.
In 2013, the man was convicted of assault and his three-year sentence of imprisonment was suspended on conditions, the judge noted. The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction.
The manager took a civil claim for damages for personal injuries, distress and shock. After the man failed to lodge a defence, the Circuit Court assessed damages at €59,742 at a hearing the man did not attend. The man then appealed to the High Court.
In his recently published judgments, Mr Justice O’Donnell said, because of references to family law proceedings, he had anonymised the parties.
At the outset of the hearing, the man, representing himself, argued it should not be dealt with just as an assessment for reasons including alleged suppression of evidence by the manager.
The judge directed it would proceed as an assessment only but permitted the man to cross-examine the manager.
Nothing in that cross-examination undermined the credibility of her account of the incident, or of her injuries, the judge found.
The judge awarded total damages of €50,868 for physical and psychological injuries
The physical injuries included a broken nose which was corrected under general anaesthetic and bruising to her face and arm, he held. The “more significant” injury was psychological and he accepted she suffered mild to moderate post-traumatic stress disorder over the years since the assault.
The assault happened in the manager’s place of work and, whether or not the instruction from the child’s mother that the man was not to collect the child was correct, it was “absolutely unacceptable” to assault the manager in those circumstances, the judge said.
In a separate costs ruling, he said the manager was entitled to her costs against the man of the Circuit and High Court cases.
