About this case:

• Citation:
  [2024] IEHC 324
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  High Court
• Judge:
  Mr Justice Paul Coffey

Delivering judgment for the High Court, Mr Justice Paul Coffey opined: “I am satisfied that on any objective assessment, the danger complained of was a feature which one would expect to find at any caravan park such that the plaintiff could only have expected to find her own electric cable protruding from the services post to which she knew it had been hooked up.”

Background

On 13 July 2018, the plaintiff and her husband made a late booking to visit the defendant’s caravan park. They were assigned a longer than normal pitch which exceeded the length of their caravan’s electricity cable.

The defendant provided a black extension lead to allow the plaintiff’s husband to connect the caravan to their service post. The plaintiff’s husband connected their orange cable to the post and extended it to their caravan using the defendant’s extension lead.

On the following afternoon, which was a bright and sunny day, the plaintiff tripped over the electricity cable running from the service post on her way back from filling her kettle at the service post, fracturing her arm and injuring her thumb.

The plaintiff’s engineer gave evidence that a power cable poses a tripping hazard when placed on a pedestrian route and at an excessive distance from a pitch, imposing a duty on the defendant to minimise this risk by locating its service outlets in a manner which reduced the distance between the service posts and pitches. The engineer suggested that exposing the plaintiff to an open cable for 16m was dangerous.

The High Court

Mr Justice Coffey noted that the case fell to be decided pursuant to the provisions of s.3 of the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1995, which sets out the duty of care towards visitors to a premises to ensure that a visitor does not suffer injury or damage by reason of a danger existing thereon.

Having regard to Lavin v Dublin Airport Authority plc [2016] IECA 268, Mr Justice Coffey considered that the common law distinction between an unusual danger and a “usual” danger which could be avoided by the taking of reasonable care on part of the visitor remained important, though not determinative, in assessing whether a risk constitutes a “danger” for the purposes of the 1995 Act.

The court also considered White v William Doherty & S&K Kerry Limited [2019] IECA 295, wherein the Court of Appeal determined that an uneven surface on which the plaintiff lost her footing was in keeping with the “naturalistic settings” one expects to find at a caravan park, and that a visitor would not expect “pristine surfaces” and so would be expected to take reasonable care as to any tripping hazard arising therefrom.

Mr Justice Coffey set out that no liability could arise under s.3 where as a matter of law, the risk complained of was a “usual danger” which on objective assessment is to be anticipated by the visitor, and where the risk can be avoided by the visitor taking reasonable care for their own safety.

The court determined that the issues to be decided were whether the plaintiff’s own cable which was hanging down or lying on the ground in close proximity to the services outlet constituted a usual or unusual danger, and if a usual danger, whether the plaintiff taking reasonable care would have avoided the risk of tripping over the cable.

The High Court found that on the balance of probabilities, the plaintiff knew the approximate angle at which her cable ran from the services post to her caravan, and knew that she could have avoided contact with same had she gone around the front of her caravan. Instead, the court found that the plaintiff walked around her husband’s parked car and was not exposed to an open cable for 16m as suggested by her engineer.

The court also found that the plaintiff had stepped over the cable to fill her water without difficulty, and would have had in her line of vision the orange cable while monitoring her kettle to ensure that it did not overflow and while turning off the tap. 

Mr Justice Coffey accepted the opinion of the defendant’s engineer that plaintiff likely entangled her foot in the cable by inserting or catching her flip-flop sandal under a section of cable that was lying on the ground.

The judge determined that no matter how it is managed, the risk of injury created by a cable lying on the ground could not be eliminated in any caravan park having vertical posts providing services, and that such posts were “a typical, if not inevitable feature which a visitor must expect in a caravan park”.

The High Court was satisfied that the electricity cable, whether hanging from the upright or lying on the ground, and whether on the path or in the grass in the immediate vicinity of the service post, could not as a matter of law be considered an unusual danger for the plaintiff and was a feature which one would expect to find at any caravan park.

Furthermore, the court concluded that the danger could have been avoided by the plaintiff taking reasonable care for her own safety.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the High Court found that there was no breach of the duty of care provided by s.3 of the 1995 Act and dismissed the action.

Scanlan v Michael McDonnell t/a The Woodlands Caravan and Camping Park [2024] IEHC 324