Edenderry Mart has been ordered to pay damages of €75,000 to an Offaly farmer after he was attacked by a bull on the premises in 2017.

Fergus Malone, a cattle and dairy farmer from Edenderry, spent 10 days in Tullamore Hospital following the accident after he sustained five broken ribs and severe soft tissue damage to his lower left back and soft tissue damage with loss of power to his left shoulder and arm.

Malone claimed damages for alleged negligence on the part of the mart arising from an accident which occurred there on 5 August 2017 whereby he was attacked and gored by a young bull while in one of the holding pens.

He experienced severe pain, sleep disturbance and nightmares in the months following the accident. It was three months before he could do any work at all on the farm.

Edenderry Mart had denied full liability for the incident and said there was no negligence on its part in terms of the systems it had in place in the mart on the day.

It argued that Malone was “entirely the author of his own misfortune”, maintaining that “the bull attacked the plaintiff (Malone) after the plaintiff provoked the bull by hitting him on the head with a stick,” court documents seen by the Irish Farmers Journal show.

Spooked

Malone strongly denied that he was the author of his own misfortune and laid the blame for the accident instead squarely on the defendant for bringing about a situation where animals were being funnelled back into the pen in which he was standing at a time when he had been asked by the mart manager to steer bulls out of that pen.

This, he contended, resulted in the bull in question becoming “spooked” and charging at him.

In his judgement, judge Cian Ferriter concluded that following evidence from five witnesses called by the mart and Malone himself, that Malone’s account of the events that occurred were the “most accurate and reliable”.

“I do not believe that he hit the bull and thereby provoked the attack, as alleged by a number of the defendant’s witnesses,” he said.

“In short, the defendant (the mart) acted negligently, after one of the animals in question became blocked in the chute, by turning animals back in through an open gate into the holding pen where the plaintiff, at the defendant’s instruction, was seeking to drive remaining animals out and into the ‘runway’ in the direction of this chute area,” he said.

Escaping harm

The judge said that there was “no realistic way” of Malone escaping that harm or otherwise protecting himself given how quickly the incident happened.

“I do not believe the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence in the circumstances,” he said.

As regards assessment of damages, in light of the nature of the injuries sustained and the fact that Malone has ongoing injuries, he said the appropriate level of general damages was €75,000.