Former Limerick hurler sees €950K damages award reduced on appeal

PHARMA GIANT JOHNSON & Johnson has secured a €58,000 reduction against a High Court award of almost €1 million to a former Limerick senior hurler injured while freeing a colleague trapped in a machine at their plant in Plassey, Co Limerick.

Last April, the High Court made a €944,000 award to Mark Keane for injuries to his right hand, arm and shoulder arising from the 2018 incident.

Keane told the court that since the injury he was not the man he was, nor the one he hoped to become and felt “let down” by the famed multinational bluechip company.

An accomplished hurler, Keane won three consecutive All-Irelands with Limerick under 21s between 2000 and 2002 and played senior from 2000 to 2006.

Johnson & Johnson, listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $566M (€496.84 million), had said the company “absolutely” accepted responsibility for the injury Keane suffered in the form of the nerve damage and injury to his right hand. However, the company did not accept responsibility for his claim of injury to his right shoulder.

Johnson & Johnson appealed the award, saying the judge’s findings were unsupported in law.

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In a judgment published today, the Court of Appeal reduced the payout to Keane to €886,000.

The court said the reduction reflected that Keane had already been awarded €42,000 in 2019 for a road traffic incident in 2014. The reduction also reflected an adjustment in Keane’s expected future earnings after the court considered previous case law on how that should be calculated.

The Court of Appeal noted that Johnson & Johnson had argued that any loss of earnings was partially due to that accident and therefore the award made by the lower court amounted to a double counting.

Johnson & Johnson, at the High Court, claimed that Keane gave “evidence that he had not cycled a bicycle in years, which he subsequently accepted was untruthful in cross-examination”.

Keane accepted he had gone cycling socially with friends to get out of the house for his mental health after the injury, but that he did not enter any races. He said he cycled in June 2019 but has not done so since.

Keane took his High Court case against Johnson & Johnson Vision care (Ireland).

The 45-year-old alleged Johnson & Johnson was negligent and breached their duty of care towards him on 10 September 2018, while he was working as a technician making contact lenses.

Keane alleged the company failed to provide him with a safe place of work and a safe system of work.

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