Abu Dhabi: The Civil Court of Appeals issued a decision to reduce the compensation for a British woman who is suffering from brain damage after a wooden shelf fell on her head during her stay at the Emirates Palace Hotel in 2008.
The victim’s family had initially asked for Dh70 million in compensation for the emotional, financial and psychological damage that resulted from the incident, but the court ruled that the hotel, its administrative company and the insurance company pay Dh100,000 in total.
The family also told the court that the woman who was staying with her fiancée at the time, had suffered post-traumatic seizures and epilepsy as a result of the accident. However, the court decided that there was no evidence to link the incident to the epilepsy. In fact, court documents state that the victim was already being treated for this condition in her home country before the injury and that she was exaggerating her condition.
The hearing took place with the attendance of several members of the support campaign that the woman’s family launched.
The Court of First Instance had initially ruled that the hotel, its administrative company and the insurance company pay a total of Dh200,000 in punitive damages.
However, both the defendants and the plaintiff were not satisfied with the ruling and chose to appeal it before the court which resulted in a reduced amount.
A medical and an engineering committee were sent to the hotel to inspect the manner in which the 2.2kg shelf was fixed and their findings revealed that the incident could not have taken place in the manner that the victim described.
In fact, the committees’ reports showed that the shelf could have fallen vertically or horizontally and would have hit the closet’s door in either situation and would not have caused major damage as it would have fallen slowly in both cases.
In fact, the engineering team stated that the shelf could not have fallen in the way that the victim claimed unless somebody had tampered with it before it fell.
