Ex-Miss Ireland awarded €12k for ankle injury

Former Miss Ireland Nuala Holloway, who injured her left ankle in a trip and fall at Superquinn Shopping Centre, Blackrock, five years ago, has been awar-ded €12,000 damages.

Ms Holloway Casey, aged 60, of Rowanbyrn, Blackrock, Dublin, told Judge Barry Hickson in the Circuit Civil Court that she still suffered intermittent pain from the injury, which had been exacerbated by a second fall in the same store in Feb 2009.

The mother of two, a former model, artist, and language teacher at St Killian’s German School, Dublin, said that on Dec 21, 2007, her high heel had caught in a hole at the entrance to a descending travelator.

Paul Murray, counsel for Ms Holloway Casey, said liability had been conce-ded by joint defendants Secret Retail Holdings, which trades as Superquinn, and Kine (Ireland) Limited, travelator and escalator fitters, of Ballymount, Dublin.

Ms Holloway Casey told the hearing to assess damages that she had taken painkillers to get her through Christmas 2007 before visiting her doctor 10 days after the fall.

She had suffered “dreadful pain” following the accident and had to give up tennis, giving up her membership of Monkstown Tennis Club.

She told Conor Kearney, counsel for the defendants, that she had also slipped and fell in the Superquinn store in Feb 2009, two years after the injury to her ankle.

Weight bearing had afterwards become very difficult on each of her legs and at one stage she worried that she would end up in a wheelchair.

Ms Holloway Casey said she had been offered an opportunity to have surgery on her ankle but had turned it down on the basis she would have been laid up for a couple of months.

Judge Hickson, awarding her €12,000 for personal injuries with €1,250 special damages to cover various expenses, said she occasionally still felt pain in her ankle.