The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal in favour of RSA Insurance Ireland in a dispute with Zurich Insurance over which company must provide an indemnity for devastating injuries caused to a bin company worker.
Joseph Moore, an employee of Urban and Rural Recycling Ltd (URRL), of Wexford, suffered life-changing injuries in the 2013 accident.
While he was operating a bin lift on a lorry, a bin which was near its emptying position fell and struck him on the head.
Moore, who was also the driver of the vehicle, brought a claim against his employer, URRL, alleging, among other things, negligence and a failure to provide a safe system of work.
The High Court found that Zurich Insurance plc was liable, under a motor policy, for the injuries sustained when a wheelie bin containing glass bottles fell onto the employee as he was loading it onto a collection lorry.
The Court of Appeal overturned this, holding instead that RSA Insurance Ireland, as the employer’s liability insurer, should answer the claim.
RSA applied for, and was granted, another appeal by a five-judge Supreme Court on Thursday.
It also said there was a need for a complete overhaul of the mandatory motor insurance requirement.
Giving the court's judgment, Mr Justice Brian Murray found that Zurich's contentions as to the proper construction of the law on mandatory motor insurance, Section 56 of the Road Traffic Act, were not well-founded.
URRL as a corporate body was not incapable of being a user of such a vehicle, he said.
It was possible for an employer – in this case URRL – to "use" a vehicle through the actions of its employee undertaken in the course of that employee’s employment, he said.
The appeal raised issues as to the ambit of the mandatory motor insurance obligation, as well as potentially new questions about the proper interpretation of a 2009 EU Directive which requires member states to adopt measures to ensure that civil liability in respect of the use of vehicles normally based in their territory is covered by insurance.
Mr Justice Murray said it had been possible to resolve issues of law by reference to ordinary principles of statutory construction found in our domestic law.
While he was conscious that the potential influence of the 2009 Directive had never been far from this case, it had not been necessary for him to rely on its terms for the conclusions which he reached.
However, he said legislators should look at the mandatory motor insurance provision because if it does not properly implement EU law, the effect may be to expose the taxpayer to the cost of compensating the victim of an accident in circumstances in which that cost was intended to be, and might be said to properly be, the obligation of a motor insurer.
"It might also be thought that continuous piecemeal changes to those provisions increase the risk of further non-compliance, and that a complete and coherent legislative overhaul of the compulsory motor insurance obligation, is long overdue", he said.
The judge said that having answered the questions of law in this case in favour of RSA and against Zurich, it was a matter for the parties to proceed to agitate the application of those findings of law in these proceedings "as they think appropriate".
