A woman who suffered serious burns as a child has won a case against her grandmother, who was looking after her at the time
The 30-year-old woman successfully sued her grandmother for more than $90,000 for injuries sustained when she was a toddler.
Kobie Thompson from Coffs Harbour told the court that she pulled on a cord of a boiling kettle, causing it to splash hot water all over her at her grandma’s Central Coast home in the 1980s.
The NSW District Court heard that although Ms Thompson has no memory of the incident, she had suffered serious burns to her right nipple, abdomen, leg and foot.
Her grandmother defended claims of negligence, saying that she believed the 20-month-old child was being supervised by her mother.
Ms Thompson said the burns had impacted on her general wellbeing, she was embarrassed by the scarring, could not breastfeed her children due to the injury and was worried her appearance would hamper her prospects of finding a new partner.
The judge found the grandmother to be negligent in her duty of caring for the youngster, saying that “the burden of taking precautions would have been very light … the kettle could simply have been located in a safer place”.
He ruled the grandmother must pay her granddaughter $92,909.10 in damages. Ms Thompson said she would use at least $10,000 to pay for breast reconstruction surgery.
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