Delay in personal injury case leads to dismissal as fair trial deemed impossible

High Court dismisses a personal injury case due to inordinate delay and significant changes in the plaintiff's account of the accident, which led to a real risk of an unfair trial. The plaintiff, who was an infant at the time of the alleged accident, claimed to have slipped and fallen at a play premises, sustaining injury. However, the progression of the case experienced a ten-year delay, and the description of the accident changed substantially over time. The defendant suffered prejudice due to the lack of contemporaneous investigation and the subsequent renovation of the premises, which rendered an engineer's inspection impossible. The court found that these factors combined to create a situation where a fair trial could not be conducted, affirming the O’Domhnaill jurisprudence standard of "a real risk of an unfair trial or an unjust result."