A lawsuit brought by a firefighter working with the Dublin Ambulance Service has been settled over a shoulder injury he allegedly sustained while pulling a trolley.
ark Finnerty claimed he pulled his shoulder when the trolley hit an obstruction in a nursing home basement entrance doorway.
The trolley was led from the basement by Mr Finnerty and a colleague to urgently get a 96-year-old man who had gone into cardiac arrest into the ambulance for oxygen.
Mr Finnerty sued his employer, Dublin City Council, and Clontarf Private Nursing Home and Silverstream Healthcare Management Ltd over the accident at Sunnyside Nursing Home, Clontarf, Dublin, on 7 March 2017. The defendants had rejected his claims.
The case opened on Thursday and on Friday, David McGrath SC, for Mr Finnerty, said the case had been resolved and he sought legal costs in favor of his client against only the nursing home defendants.
Ms Justice Carmel Stewart, who on Thursday advised the parties to discuss the case overnight, congratulated them on the settlement and dropped the case.
The court heard that the nursing home consists of three conjoined Victorian houses above the basement and that access to it is via a driveway with a number of curves.
Although the call to the nursing home was not initially a heart call, after being lifted down from the third floor in a wheelchair, the patient stopped breathing and sank into the chair.
He was taken to an ambulance, but later died in hospital.
Mr Finnerty, of Balgriffin Park, Hole in the Wall Road, Dublin 13, claimed to have suffered a tear in his right shoulder muscle.
He claimed that, among other things, the municipality had failed to provide a safe workplace or properly train him in the use of the trolley.
The nursing home reportedly failed to provide a safe means of transporting the patient to the ambulance or conduct a reasonable risk assessment of the property.
Both defendants denied the claims, while the city government argued that any liability lay with the nursing home due to the nature of the access.
The nursing home operators said the council had not provided proper training as Mr Finnerty did not follow proper procedures for using the trolley in the circumstances in which he found himself.