The litany of questionable compensation claims brought before our courts may suggest an incomplete understanding of the idea of fair play or integrity. This defect is misused by insurance companies to justify eye-watering premiums — a justification holed below the water line at a recent Oireachtas hearing. A recent survey concluded that legal professions — other professions, too — drive these claims for reasons that have little enough to do with the majesty of the law. These issues came together this week when a judge dismissed a case brought by a boy who claimed his school was negligent in supplying him with a deflated football that caused him to break his wrist during a soccer match. Judge Gerald Keys dismissed the case by Julius Kroka, aged 14, taken against Ennis Educate Together, saying that if he won, “I think you have to stop playing football altogether in schools.”
