{"id":154356,"date":"2025-10-31T00:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154356\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T00:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:55:08","slug":"case-brought-by-wife-of-consultant-psychiatrist-who-died-after-being-hit-by-taxi-settled-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154356\/","title":{"rendered":"Case brought by wife of consultant psychiatrist who died after being hit by taxi settled \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A High Court<\/a> personal injury action brought by the wife of a consultant psychiatrist who died after he was hit by a taxi while walking home from a Christmas party has been settled, following what a judge described as a \u201cvery, very sad\u201d case.<\/p>\n

Married father-of-three Dr Martin Lawlor (49) died from injuries sustained after the collision near Ballycurreen, Kinsale Road, near Cork<\/a> Airport on December 15th, 2018.<\/p>\n

His wife, Dr Helen Murphy Lawlor, took the case against taxi driver Denis McSweeney of Pouladuff Rd, Cork City.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the court ordered the agreed settlement and the striking out of the case and substituted Axa Insurance in place of pensioner McSweeney, who died last November. <\/p>\n

Ms Justice Emily Egan made an order for the plaintiff\u2019s costs with damages to be agreed in what she said was a \u201cvery, very sad case\u201d and offered her condolences to Dr Lawlor\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

Dr Murphy Lawlor, with an address listed as Stalybridge, Cheshire, UK, was represented by Dr John F O\u2019Mahony SC, James O\u2019Mahony SC, and Ray Motherway BL, instructed by Matthew J Nagle & Co. <\/p>\n

Dr O\u2019Mahony thanked the judge for her \u201cpatience and indulgence\u201d in the case and said he was pleased to announce the matter settled and that it could be struck out.<\/p>\n

Ms Justice Egan said she was \u201cenormously pleased\u201d to hear of the case\u2019s resolution.<\/p>\n

Eamon Marray SC, for the defence, expressed his condolences to Dr Lawlor\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

Dr Murphy Lawlor had alleged that McSweeney collided with Dr Lawlor, was \u201caware\u201d of doing so and then \u201cunjustifiably, recklessly and in full knowledge of the collision, deliberately and callously left the scene without compassion, concern or regard for the condition of Dr Lawlor\u201d.<\/p>\n

McSweeney was sentenced to four years\u2019 imprisonment at Cork Circuit Criminal Court in 2021 for the hit-and-run but had that halved on appeal later that year.<\/p>\n

McSweeney had pleaded guilty to failing to stop his vehicle after an incident, failing to keep his vehicle at the scene of an accident, failing to report a traffic incident to garda\u00ed and failing to give appropriate information to garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

In High Court papers, McSweeney, who was 75 at the time of his May 2021 appeal, had admitted that there had been a collision between his vehicle and Dr Lawlor who was a pedestrian on the public road at Ballycurreen on December 15th, 2018.<\/p>\n

He admitted that he had failed to stop after the collision and that the fatal injuries to Dr Lawlor were as a result of the collision.<\/p>\n

However, McSweeney had denied that the collision was caused by negligence, breach of duty or statutory duty, as alleged. <\/p>\n

Dr Lawlor, a father of three who was a native of Tralee, Co Kerry, lived in Manchester but travelled to Ireland for work.<\/p>\n

Dr Murphy Lawlor said that her husband was at the peak of his powers professionally at the time of his death, working with the HSE and Nua Healthcare and was \u201crenowned and respected\u201d for his work.<\/p>\n

When sentencing McSweeney, who had no previous convictions, at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Sean \u00d3 Donnabh\u00e1in described Dr Lawlor as a man of \u201cconsiderable compassion\u201d and an \u201cexemplar of his profession\u201d.<\/p>\n

Judge \u00d3 Donnabh\u00e1in said that he did not accept the explanation offered by McSweeney that he had panicked and attributed his actions to \u201ccallousness\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A High Court personal injury action brought by the wife of a consultant psychiatrist who died after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1877,18,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-154356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cork","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-high-court","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115466058094393053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}