AN exam supervisor who sued a university after claiming she tripped on a wastepaper bin while carrying students' test papers in Edinburgh has lost a damages claim.
Invigilator Janice Burgess, 62, suffered a shoulder injury and a sore neck and knee in the fall during which she hit a wall.
Mrs Burgess told a court that she discovered the waste paper bin was completely flat after the incident at a Napier Univer
sity campus and said: "It was like a steam roller had gone over it."
But a judge said she was not convinced that the accident happened as set out in the damages claim.
Lady Dorrian said: "She has not persuaded me that she fell because of the presence of an article on the floor. In particular, she has not persuaded me that she fell because of the presence of the waste paper bin.
"She was the only person present when she fell. It is true that she suggested, immediately after the accident, that she had fallen over the bin and repeated this to others," said the judge.
But she added: "However that suggestion all flows from the pursuer herself and her reconstruction of what she thought must have happened."
"It stems largely from the fact that she noticed afterwards that the bin was 'flattened', which was equally consistent with having simply fallen onto it," said Lady Dorrian.
The judge said: "The real problem which I encountered in this case was with the reliability, and to some extent, the credibility, of the pursuer."
Lady Dorrian said Mrs Burgess position became more elaborate "to the point of being frankly unbelievable" under cross-examination.
She said she was not suggesting the invigilator was "deliberately fabricating", but added she could not accept her evidence.
The judge said that even if she had found for Mrs Burgess she would have cut the award on the basis of contributory negligence.
Mrs Burgess, of Rattray Grove, Greenbank, in Edinburgh, was working as an invigilator with Napier University when she was injured on August 16 in 2006.
She raised an action suing the university for £30,000 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Napier University contested the claim.
Mrs Burgess said she had just finished supervising two students taking a biology resit at the Edinburgh university's Merchiston Campus and was about to leave the room carrying her paperwork after they had departed.
Mrs Burgess said her arm was put in a sling after the fall and her husband had to help her with household tasks.
She said she did not have the same strength and dexterity following her shoulder injury and did not take up an offer of the post of chief invigilator at the school because the lifting of exam papers was too heavy for her. The court heard she did not take up the offer of a permanent post as a receptionist with the university because of her legal action.
