Chloe Geraghty, a yoga instructor, who alleges that she continues to endure neck and shoulder discomfort from a car crash she was involved in seven years ago, has confided to the High Court that she posts pictures of herself executing shoulder and headstands on Instagram because unique postures are necessary for her social media presence. “It’s my means of income, people don’t want a person seated in a meditative posture,” expressed Ms Geraghty to Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds.
The judicial ruling of High Court is to evaluate the damages to be compensated in Geraghty’s case, who is 28 years old. As she was interrogated, she voiced her disagreement with the opposing party’s claim that she did not experience an injury.
The yoga instructor, originally from Lucan but currently residing in Spain, filed a lawsuit against the driver of the other vehicle, Eoin Carroll, from Stocking Wood Copse, Rathfarnham, Dublin, in the Circuit Court. However, the case was annulled because Geraghty could not return from Spain but filed an appeal in the High Court.
She asserted that post the accident on the 8th of June, 2017, she experienced pain in her neck and shoulder and was diagnosed with a soft tissue injury. This led to her being advised a course of anti-inflammatory medicines and sessions of physiotherapy.
As the case commenced, Thomas P Hogan, Geraghty’s principal lawyer, communicated to the court that while the responsibility was accepted, the opposition proposed that the accident had no significant impact.
He further transmitted his client’s statement that her vehicle was shoved forward roughly a metre due to the incident, causing her neck and shoulder injury.
Ms Geraghty mentioned that she was employed as a personal shopper at the time and was on the way to deliver items to Dundrum. She informed the court that she was jerked forward slightly during the crash and that her car’s airbags did not deploy. A week after experiencing pain, she visited her general practitioner who noted sensitivity in her neck and she later took physiotherapy.
She admitted to enduring significant discomfort in her neck and shoulder and discreetly mentioned that the pain, while not trivial, was constant.
After becoming a yoga teacher, she found that an excessive yoga workout could extremely trigger her pain. She took part in a yoga instructor course in Thailand in 2019 but noted experiencing discomfort post classes, signifying that she was endeavoring to regain her strength.
During her interrogation by Moira Flahive, the senior counsel representing the opposing party, Ms Geraghty acknowledged owning an Instagram account for her yoga enterprise. In relation to her robust yoga training in Thailand, involving three daily sessions and an hour of gym workout, she confessed to experiencing significant pain subsequently and resorting to painkillers. When questioned about several Instagram updates, the legal representative indicated that though Ms Geraghty once counseled against practising yoga with any form of neck injury in a post, she seemed to be ignoring her own suggestion. Ms Geraghty responded, admitting that, in spite of suffering from a neck injury herself, she was indeed disregarding her own guidance. She disclosed her daily reliance on painkillers to manage her pain and revealed that she never informed a doctor, who examined her subsequently, of her yoga instructor training or inversions, as he did not inquire about them. The court proceedings are set to resume the following week.