A FOUR-YEAR-old child, held to have been injured when only at 20 weeks gestation in her mother’s womb, has been awarded €45,000 damages for personal injury resulting from an accident in a Tesco store.

Barrister David K McGrath, counsel for Siwan Stewart who is now just three months short of her fifth birthday, told Judge Eoin Garavan in the Circuit Civil Court that the unborn baby girl was injured when her mother collided with her shopping trolley that stopped suddenly on a Tesco travellator.

McGrath, who appeared with Sean Miller of Crowley Miller Solicitors, said Siwan’s mother, Elaine Stewart, banged against her own shopping trolley when it stopped without warning on the travellator in Tesco’s at the Bloomfield Shopping Centre, Lower George’s Street, Dunlaoghaire, Co Dublin, in February 2013.

Judge Garavan said the injury of an unborn child in a shopping accident was a most unusual case and one which he had not been aware of having previously come before the court.

McGrath said that when Siwan was born in May 2013 she was found to have been suffering with haemolytic disease of the newborn, a type of jaundice and had to be treated in a special unit for just under a week.

He said a medical expert had related Siwan’s condition to the travellator accident in Tesco’s and following the initiation of a claim on her daughter’s behalf by Elaine Stewart, of Claremont Road, Sandymount, Dublin, the Tesco store had proffered a settlement of €45,000 to Siwan.

Counsel told the court that Ms Stewart’s daughter Adelaide, who was three at the time and had fallen and injured her head on the travellator, had been offered a settlement by Tescos of €28,000 and he was recommending acceptance of both offers to the court.

McGrath said that the girls’ mother had not made any claim against Tescos on her own behalf but only on behalf of her children. Judge Garavan said the offers in both cases were very good and he approved both settlements.

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