A judge has approved a €17,500 settlement offer to a four-year-old boy who suffered an injury to his face when an automatic door closed on his head as he exited a Lidl store.
Barrister Keith O’Grady told Judge Fiona O’Sullivan in the Circuit Civil Court on Tuesday that the door manufacturer Wanzl (Ireland) Limited, of Balbriggan, Co Dublin, had come on record for both its own company and Lidl.
Mr O’Grady, who appeared with Lauren Delahunty of Sean Grennan Solicitors, said he was recommending the court’s approval of the settlement offer that had been made on behalf of both defendants.
Counsel said that in July 2022 four-year-old Azlan Khan was following his father, Khalid Khan, through the see-through automatic exit doors in Lidl’s store in Lusk, Co Dublin, when they closed on him.
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Mr O’Grady said Khalid Khan was at the time a specialist registrar in the emergency department of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and had been in a position to treat his son, applying steri-strips and analgesia as required.
Mr Khan, now a consultant in emergency medicine, had passed through the doors without issue but it had turned out the doors had not been calibrated to detect the passage through of a boy of his then young child’s height and had suddenly closed on Azlan’s head.
Azlan’s mum, Ujala Qasim, also a medical doctor of Clonrath Lane, Lusk, Co Dublin, told the court in written evidence that her son had been examined by Mr Kevin Cronin, consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, who considered a 1.5cm permanent scar was well hidden in the folds of the boy’s upper eyelid and was unlikely to interfere with his function or cosmetically.
Judge O’Sullivan said she considered the compensation offer for Azlan, now aged seven, a good one and approved the settlement.
