A four-year-old child has been awarded €45,000 compensation in relation to an accident she was involved in, in a Tesco store, when only at 20 weeks gestation in her mother’s womb.
The young girl, Siwan Stewart, was represented in the Circuit Civil Court court by barrister David K. McGrath who told Judge Eoin Garavan that the unborn baby girl, who is now just three months short of her fifth birthday, sustained injuries when her mother was struck by her shopping trolley which came to a sudden stop on a Tesco travelator.
Mr McGrath informed the Judge that Siwan’s mother, Elaine, crashed into her own shopping trolley when it halted unexpectedly on the travelator in Tesco’s at the Bloomfield Shopping Centre, Lower George’s Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, in February 2013.
Presiding Judge Garavan said that this was the first time he had dealt with the injury of an unborn child and the sort of one which, to the best of his knowledge, had not come before the court before.
Mr McGrath told Judge Garavan that when Siwan was delivered in May 2013 it was noticed that she had haemolytic disease of the newborn, a sort of jaundice and had to be treated medically in a special unit for just under seven days. A consultant had linked Siwan’s condition to the travelator accident that involved her mother in Tesco’s.
Following her initial filing of the personal injury compensation action on her daughter’s behalf, Ms Elaine Stewart, of Claremont Road, Sandymount, Dublin was offered a travelator injury compensation settlement offer of €45,000.
The Circuit Civil Court was also told that Ms Stewart’s other daughter Adelaide, who was three at the time and had fallen and struck her head on the travelator in the same accident, has been offered a personal injury Tescos compensation settlement of €28,000. Mr McGrath was recommending that the Judge approve both offers.
Mrs Stewart made no claim herself in relation to her own involvement in the accident, she only claimed against Tescos on her own behalf but only on behalf of her children. Judge Garavan approved both settlements and referred to the two offers as ‘very good’.