High Court of Ireland Decisions

1. The Plaintiff then a twenty year old, suffered a serious injury to his eye in July 1995 when a glass bottle of carbonated water, which he was about to place in a poolside dispenser, fell and shattered on the tiled floor, sending a glass splinter into his eye.

2. The Plaintiff is suing his employer, and the supplier of the water. He can, of course, plead his case as best he may and any application for discovery must proceed on the case as pleaded, without any summary adjudication of any of the grounds of liability pleaded.

3. In particular, the plaintiff pleads that glass bottles, per se, are hazardous and ought not be used at all or, perhaps more particularly, as containers of carbonated liquids. Were such a case to succeed it would have serious consequences for public policy regarding packaging, recycling and the environment.

4. There are full Defences filed by both defendants.

5. The plaintiff now (by Notice of Motion of 3rd day of October 2001) seeks discovery of seven categories of documents, categories (b) to (h) inclusive, from the second named defendant. The categories nearly all concern research, quality control and other accidents involving such glass bottles for a pre-accident period of five years. These documents would help in establishing that this defendant knew that such bottles could explode, as happened on this occasion, when dropped on a hard surface. It is alleged that this defendant “knew that carbonated water in a glass bottle was likely to explode”, “failed to heed the information available to it” and “disregarded a known hazard”. These particulars of negligence are denied.

6. This claim is in the nature of a secondary basis of liability, pleaded to allow reliance on same if the plaintiff’s principal claim (that the bottle was hazardous) is met with defence evidence that this defendant did not know that such was the case. But does this defendant escape liability if it proves ignorance of the hazard? I hardly think so. Apart altogether from a clear credibility gap, with which I cannot concern myself, the plaintiff can prove and succeed on his claim that this bottle was dangerous and that this defendant ought to have known this fact (especially under Defective Products Legislation), by expert evidence he can himself obtain from any litigation engineer. By no stretch of the imagination is it “necessary” for the plaintiff to have access to the defendant’s files in the manner sought. He can easily make his case without them.

7. The facts in this case, indeed in most cases, speak for themselves. Most plaintiff applications for discovery of the defendants records are purely precautionary, and relate to the defendant’s state of knowledge at the time of the accident. It is now essential if the plaintiff seeks discovery that the Court be satisfied that the plaintiff cannot prove his case without documentary evidence of this fact. If the fact itself is merely subsidiary, and incapable itself of constituting the principal fact on which liability might be decided, whether or not the plaintiff can prove the fact ceases to be a basis for ordering discovery, because the fact is not material.

8. I will only order discovery of supply documents (par. (h)) since this defendant denies having supplied the offending bottle to the employer, though I doubt that will be a real issue in the action: the plaintiff’s own evidence should be sufficient on this point.