A MOTORIST who broke a finger and suffered anxiety after a car crash has been awarded almost €30,000 in the Circuit Court.
Noreen Boyce, who was pregnant at the time of the crash in 2012, had sued a holidaymaker she blamed for the incident in Milford.
Michelle Ramsay, from Belfast, had contested the case at Letterkenny Circuit Court claiming Ms Boyce had caused the crash by driving on the wrong side of the road.
She was backed by friends in the car who claimed Ms Ramsay was forced to swerve when Ms Boyce’s Honda Civic car crossed the white line into her lane.
Ms Ramsay’s Vauxhall Corsa and Ms Boyce’s car were extensively damaged in the incident.
The Belfast woman, on a weekend break in Donegal with friends, told Judge Karen Fergus that she had pulled out of the Lagg Service Station in Milford just before the incident around 7.30pm on November 13, 2012.
She claimed that she was just beginning to accelerate when she saw an oncoming car on her side of the road.
Ms Ramsay said she pulled the car to the left to try to avoid a collision and then braked hard but couldn’t avoid a crash.
She rejected claims by barrister Peter Nolan for Ms Boyce that she had mistaken road markings beside a hard shoulder for the central line of the road.
Ms Boyce, backed by three friends and an independent witness, told the court that Ms Ramsay was on her side of the road.
She said she pulled her car to the right in order to try to avoid a head-on collision.
However both vehicles collided.
She said she was pregnant at the time but suffered just a broken finger in the incident.
However she told he court that she could not drive for some months after the crash and had suffered from anxiety.
Judge Fergus said she believed all the witnesses had tried to give truthful accounts of what happened but she was satisfied that Ms Ramsay was mistaken and had made an error on a road she was unfamiliar with.
She awarded Ms Boyce, from Carrigart, €25,000 in damages for her broken finger and anxiety.
She also awarded special damages of €4,670 for loss of earnings and damage caused to her car.