A MOTHER who was left wheelchair-bound after she fell off a banister while imitating Mary Poppins has lost her multi-million-pound compensation bid.
Ruth Geary fell nearly 12ft in JD Wetherspoon’s Union Rooms pub in Newcastle in 2007, sustaining damage to her spine that has left her tetraplegic.
Her lawyers said the handrail, part of the building’s original 19th Century design, was more than 20cm below the recommended height and that the pub company should pay compensation for breaching its duty of care.
However, after a two-day hearing, a judge rejected Mrs Geary’s claim, ruling that “she was the author of her own misfortune”.
The accident happened in March 2007 when Pfizer employee Mrs Geary and colleagues went for a drink at the Tokyo Bar, in Newcastle, before moving on to the Union Rooms, in Westgate Road, owned by JD Wetherspoon.
Mrs Geary said she ate at the pub and had drunk four vodka and tonics during the afternoon, but was not drunk.
The court heard that the group talked about the banister during their meal and Mrs Geary talked about sliding down it.
One of her colleagues slid down an upper section of the banister, before she mounted the lower section, which had a three-and-a-half metre drop below it.
Colleague Mark Adams said: “She hitched herself up onto the banister and went straight over backwards. The sound of Ruth hitting the marble floor stays with me.”
After two days of evidence at the High Court, sitting in Newcastle, Mr Justice Coulson ruled that Mrs Geary had no claim against the pub company.
The judge said: “It appears that her comment was first made in connection with the film Mary Poppins, which she had seen with her children and which, of course, features scenes in which Julie Andrews slides both down and up the banisters on a sweeping staircase.
“The claimant freely chose to do something which she knew was dangerous.
“Because of the conversations about Mary Poppins, there was even a degree of pre-planning.”
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