A veterinary assistant who was blinded in one eye when a foal kicked him during a routine microchip procedure has won €100,000 in damages — after the Court of Appeals ruled his employer sent him to do the job without proper protection.
The Nicosia District Court had found the Cyprus Racing Authority solely liable for the accident, ordering it to pay compensation covering both the loss of sight and loss of earnings. The Authority challenged the finding of liability and the size of the award before the Court of Appeal. Both challenges failed.
What happened
The veterinary assistant was employed by the Racing Authority and travelled with the Authority’s vet to a farm in Agios Trimithias on 28 April 2006 to implant microchips by injection into a group of young foals.
The procedure was straightforward: the farm owner held each foal by both ears from the front, the assistant held it by the tail from the side, and the vet injected the microchip into the left side of the foal’s neck. Three animals were chipped without incident.
During the fourth, everything changed in a split second. The foal suddenly jerked its head sharply downward, slipping free of the farm owner’s grip. It shot forward and lashed out with its hind legs, striking the assistant in the right eye. He had no time to react.
The ruling also noted a detail that had not helped matters: during the procedure, the foal’s mother had been fitted with a bridle and left free to roam the area. She was agitated and whinnying around her foal throughout.
Why the Racing Authority was found solely to blame
The three-judge panel — comprising judges K. Stamatiou, L. Dimitriadou-Andreou and A. David — was clear on the law: an employer must take every precaution that could reasonably be foreseen as putting an employee at risk.
A horse reacting unpredictably is always foreseeable, the court said. Appropriate measures must follow from that.
In this case, they did not. The Racing Authority had failed to supply the worker with proper equipment and, critically, a specialist helmet. The court found no evidence that the assistant could have taken any reasonable precaution of his own to avoid what happened.
The compensation
The judges were equally firm on the €100,000 award. The worker was young when the accident happened.
His injuries were permanent, affecting not just his health but his ability to work — and his limited educational background narrowed his employment options further still.
The District Court’s approach to calculating the loss of earning capacity, they said, was correct. The award stands.
