Mother of passenger killed in stolen car awarded €72,000
The settlement offer from the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland was approved by Mr Justice Michael Hanna at the High Court sitting in Cork.
Tom Creed, counsel for Anna Hurley, mother of the late Richard Cambridge, said: “This is a fatal claim arising out of a road traffic accident. The plaintiff’s son, Richard Anthony Cambridge, lost his life when travelling in a car driven by Roy O’Herlihy. The deceased was just 21.”
Mr Justice Hanna said he was happy to approve the settlement.
“It is a tragic case. It is a case with huge difficulties. My sympathies to the plaintiff.”
O’Herlihy, of Thomas Kent Park, The Glen, Cork, was sentenced yesterday to three years in jail with the second half of the sentence suspended at Cork Circuit Criminal Court back in 2011 for dangerous driving causing the death of Mr Cambridge at Ballyhooley Road, Ballyvolane, Cork, on March 21 2010.
Detective Sergeant Kieran O’Sullivan said the defendant stole the car after drinking all night and picked up the deceased as a passenger.
Through speed and intoxication he crashed head-on into an oncoming taxi. The defendant spent months in hospital getting treatment for injuries to both legs. The taxi driver was uninjured.
In the sentencing hearing at the time, Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said: “As a judge who hears all sorts of cases the most heart-breaking are dangerous driving causing death where young people of previous good character and future good character — one is dead and the other has his life blighted by a conviction and sentence.
“The family [of the deceased] have spoken nobly, they are not in any way vindictive. Forget about the psychobabble you read in newspapers about closure, there is never closure if your son or brother is killed in a car at four o’clock in the morning, the hurt will never go away.”
