Robert Besser
01 Jun 2025

DUBLIN, Ireland: A nurse from Tipperary has been awarded 72,000 euros by a High Court judge after she slipped and fell on a wet floor at a wedding in a four-star hotel.

Pamela Kirby, 42, was wearing high-heeled shoes when she fell after stepping out of a lift at Hotel Kilkenny in August 2018. She told the court that the pain was so bad after the fall that she thought she was going to die.

The hotel claimed that Kirby was wearing five-inch stilettos and lost her balance when her ankle gave way. It denied that the floor was wet or slippery.

Kirby sued the hotel, saying she slipped on a clear liquid on the tiled floor near the lift. The judge, Justice Tony O'Connor, said it was a strongly disputed case, but he believed in Kirby's version of what happened.

He said people have the right to wear high heels and should be able to expect hotel floors to be clean and safe. If the floor was wet, there should have been a warning sign.

The judge said the hotel did not show it had taken proper care to prevent accidents, and so it failed in its duty to protect guests.

He also said Kirby's shoes did not cause the fall, as she had worn them at many events over the past six years without problems. She had been wearing her wedding shoes from her 2012 wedding.

CCTV footage showed that other guests stepped differently when exiting the lift, but there was no sign anyone else had noticed or warned about a slippery floor before Kirby walked through.

Kirby's husband also gave evidence, saying he saw that the floor looked wet where she had fallen. The judge found him honest and believed his account.

The fall caused Kirby to dislocate her elbow, injure her leg, and break bones in her toes. She needed a cast for her arm and leg.

She had been attending a friend's wedding and had only had two glasses of wine earlier that day at the drinks reception. The accident happened as she was heading to the dinner upstairs at 5:30 p.m.

She said the other couples got out of the lift first, and she followed with her husband. She said she slipped and fell and landed on her right side.

"I was in so much pain, I thought I was going to die," she told the judge.