Woman loses £650,000 injury claim after being seen tossing Christmas tree

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Woman loses £650,000 injury claim after being seen tossing Christmas tree
theguardian.com
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I wouldn't be so quick to discount her injuries. Ask anyone with a nagging back injury, some days you feel like an absolute champ and can throw a damn tree, but other days you're bed ridden from pinched up nerves. Thats just the nature of the injury.

I had a friend who got into a car accident, driver drove off a bridge. She's got a permanently fked up back. But you'd never know it from looking at her. Some days she's out and about playing football and cycling, other days she'll take 2 hours to get out of bed because the slightest movement will leave her in tears from her fked up vertebrae.

Thank you.

One picture over riding medical reality is absolutely asinine, but it works often enough that insurance companies hire PIs to follow people around. Or did, before social media and algorithms started doing all the work for them.

She also went to the doctors after the Christmas tree throwing. It's quite possible that the tree throwing aggrevated the injury and left her in a genuinely disabled state.

It's quite possible winning a Christmas tree throwing competition was the sole reason her back got fucked up. I've fucked up my back just putting on socks so it's a bit absurd to assume a car accident was a necessary catalyst to an injury she reported after strenuous physical activity involving her back.

Definitely, though it depends on the type of accident. She was hit from behind, so if it was a relatively slow speed collision near a traffic light or junction or something you'd probably be right.

I agree completely. I have a heritable connective tissue disorder that causes me trouble to no end, especially in frequently used muscles, like those in my forearms. I have to be very careful of what I do - not lift too much or grip too hard, avoid too much repetitive motion like typing or gaming, don't hold things a certain way, etc. Once in awhile, I'll forget and just do something like I used to, like catching something heavy, and I'll be fine. Until the next morning, when I wake up in pain. Even then it's still not awful, it's the accumulation of multiple events that causes trouble. This isn't in line with what most people consider a physical disability, so I occasionally get flack from people who think I'm faking. Sometimes I choose to deal with some pain so I can do normal things for a bit, but there's no way I could do them every day for hours.

My point is a lot of people don't understand how physical disabilities actually work and seem to love "disproving" your limitations. Especially lawyers fighting against your disability claims.

RA and my wrists are kind of similar, but it's not all in the same direction. I can push shit around half the day and be fine. Two hours of sanding and I can't button my pants for two days.

The knee pain got worse throughout the day, but always rest at night. No clue why my wrists don't, the janky fucks.

You also shouldn’t be doing things that exacerbate it as well. If she has a nagging back injury, nothing good would ever come from throwing a christmas tree, but future further pain. She was caught doing stuff she shouldn’t have been, and likely wasn’t going to therapy either. Theres more to the story.

So let's just stay in bed the rest of our lives and not try to live a normal life. It's absolute bullshit that insurance is allowed to shirk their obligations by pretending be investigative journalist or playing doctor.

If you want to dispute a claim, it should be an independent medical panel pf doctors. Not just photos on a website or social media.

There's a major difference between doing low impact activities like going on walks or riding a bike/recumbent and throwing fucking trees.

No doctor would recommend doing this if you have a nagging back injury.

There is some stuff you can’t enjoy when you are sick or injured, fact of life, sorry. No reason she couldn’t watch and enjoy, or go ice skating instead, lots of options. She choose something that would injure her back, full stop.

And maybe don't do that stuff anyway while you have an insurance claim ongoing.

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Who cares, maybe she decided to do something stupid, the doctors should be the ones deciding whether her claim is legitimate or not

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A woman’s £650,000 claim for injuries allegedly suffered during a car crash has been thrown out of court in Ireland after she was pictured winning a Christmas tree-throwing competition.

However, the woman’s claim was thrown out by a high court judge in Limerick after a photograph came to light showing Grabska throwing a 5ft spruce at a charity event in January 2018.

The picture was published in a national newspaper and, while Grabska argued that she was still suffering from her injuries, Justice Carmel Stewart dismissed her claim in part due to the “graphic nature” of the image.

The court had previously been told that the married mother-of-two, from Ennis in Co Clare, had spoken to doctors days after winning the Christmas tree-throwing contest.

Her legal claim against the insurance company was for the loss of past and future earnings, with Grabksa saying she was unable to leave her bed for up to half a day at times.

The judge ultimately dismissed her case, ruling that Grabska’s behaviour after the collision was “completely at odds” with the claims she had made in relation to her injuries.


The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 52%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Like when your kid fakes being sick to stay home from school then 20 minutes after the school bus goes by they’re running around playing. Can’t keep up the lie for 20 minutes. Imagine having to manage a lie for years.

Even if she was trying to fleece the insurance, which I don't think she was, I find it insane that we are so upset that someone may possibly get something she doesn't deserve that we are okay with creating a system where so many who do need it are refused.

It’s the welfare-queen strategy: if you can show that 995/1000 people use a safety net as intended, 50% of voters can be convinced that it’s a fraud-soaked boondoggle

If doing something like this would put you out work for a week to month, maybe don’t do it? How is your back supposed to heal and get better if you never actually rest like you’re supposed to?

You can argue being able to live you life and all that, but yeah, don’t do stuff that will hurt even healthy people and than cry foul and blame something/somebody else and fleece them.

I think you missed my point. I never said she should or shouldn't have done something that could exacerbate her injury. I'm saying that even if she was a total scam artist, I would rather some scam artists get money they don't deserve than use that as a basis to block those that absolutely do need it from getting any help.

Any assistance or insurance program is going to have some grifters and a well run one will already be factoring that into how the program is designed and funded.

I can tell you first hand that disability is not at all like this binary mentality. This was a major injustice to what disability is really like. It reflects how stupid people really are and a judge that should be disbarred. Today is my 10 year anniversary of the day I was disabled by an idiot driver. I could likely toss a tree like this if I tried. It might cost me a few weeks of not sleeping more than 2 hours, but it is my right to take such a risk if I choose. Only stupid people view disability as a binary state. There are levels of misery and limitations you can not fathom. I can't hold posture for long. You can't imagine how miserable that really is. I can't sit up. Laying down most of the time is awful. Simply getting dressed and driving anywhere takes longer than my sustainable limits and pushing past those limits means I will need several days to weeks before I can get back to my standard level of inadequate sleep I have experienced for 10 years now.

Well said. Most disabilities are not obvious if you're just viewing someone for a minute or in this case, even less. Someone could be able to walk 1000 feet but need a wheelchair to travel a mile.

Also Christmas trees are not heavy? My great grandma could probably toss one if she needed to and she's 97 and also couldn't work pretty much any job.

Only stupid people would hurt themselves just to have some fun and expect everyone else to pay or make up for it.

The judge made the right decision here, she hurt herself and is blaming someone else instead of taking responsibility for her actions.

Being sick or injured means you cannot do everything a healthy person can, that’s just an unfortunate fact of life. Other people shouldn’t have to suffer and pay just so you can do something dangerous, there is plenty of other options available.

Look at it another way in this particular case, even a healthy person could permanently injure themselves throwing a tree. And she wants to blame something that happened a year before? Get over yourself.

Most people have no issue going out and having fun, but they don’t want to do the physio and recovery, since it’s no fun and also costs money. It’s usually this, they could have fun, but than they need to pay for physio, so they have fun and bitch instead.

she hurt herself

She didn't. Read the article. Her car was hit from behind.

Collision 2017, tree tossing 2018. No doctor would have recommended doing a tree toss if she was already dealing with an injury. And if she wasn’t, why would she blame a year old collision instead of what happened a few days before.

Read the article yourself maybe…

I read the article. Judge gives blow job to insurance company. What is confusing?

I don’t know why this should have to be explained. 2018 is after 2017, why is there no evidence of the injury prior to the tree tossing?

Yeah insurance sucks, but let’s stick to the facts here instead of circle jerking fallacies, yeah?

Collision 2017

Either she collided with herself or you are sensationalizing the facts to support your point that disabled people are second class citizens .

car she was travelling in was hit from behind in an accident in 2017.

From the article, the collision happened in 2017. Maybe just read the article mate…?

There is no such thing as a traffic “accident” an accident means there is no one to blame by definition. All vehicle incidents should be referred to as collisions.

Fucking money-grabska cunt

Put all of our insurance up, fuckers like that

Sure, high insurance prices are because of people with serious injuries, it's got nothing to do with insurers being profiteering bastards.