Personal Injuries
The courts are dismissing more frequently personal injury claims which they suspect are
false. In more recent times they are also more inclined to refer the plaintiff to the Director of Prosecutions to be charged with making a false claim.
In a prosecution before the Circuit Court, the defendant, aged 74, was charged with having made multiple false personal injuries between September 2012 and May 2014 to which she pleaded guilty. In the six false claims she made the compensation she received amounted in total to €28,310. Not all the claims were made in her own name but in a false name.
The defendant had a previous conviction for a similar offence for which she received a three-year suspended sentence in 2019.
The Garda National Economic Bureau investigated the multiple claims made by the defendant after they had been contacted by an anti-fraud specialist which led her to being charged.
The Gardai searched the defendant’s home under a search warrant in 2019 as well as her solicitor’s office where six claim files in the name of Margaret Mongan were seized along with a separate injury claim file in the defendant’s name, dating from 2006.
The defendant pleaded guilty to the charges. Her defiance counsel submitted that she could not have made the claims without inside knowledge of how the system works.
The judge in passing a sentence of three and a half years suspended the final 18 months having regard to the defendant’s health.
Some litigants are paying a high price in legal costs by exaggerating their claims but now those who seek to mislead the courts by false claims face the prospect of jail.
DPP v Winnifred Lawrence Circuit Court (Her Hon. Judge Pauline Codd) 16 May 2024.
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