A man who dropped his car in for repairs and had arranged to pick it up on Friday before he returned home to Galway received a phonecall to say his car had been stolen and written off. 
The court heard today how Alan Ryan dropped his car in for repairs on the recommendations of friends Gerry Dolan at the Court View Industrial estate on the Cullion Road.
Mr Ryan drove his car to Gerry Dolan’s premises for repairs on June, 22nd, 2011, he told Dolan he didn’t need the car for the rest of that week, but needed it by the Friday in order to return to Galway.
Alan Ryan told the court ”I had arranged with Gerry that I wouldn’t need the car back until Friday, he said he would hopefully have resolved the problems with the car by then and we left it at that.”
“I spoke to him a couple of times after that throughout the week but my memory is now vague and I don’t recall the content of our conversations.”
“The only phonecall that really stood out is obviously when he rang me and said my car had been stolen and subsequently wrote off.”
The court was then told that Gerry Dolan had rang Alan Ryan at lunchtime on the Thursday afternoon and told him his car was ready for collection.
Mr Dolan’s solicitor, Ciaran O’Gorman, produced phone records to show the time and date of that Thursday afternoon call which was made.
Ryan said he could not remember what was said during that phonecall and remarked that the arrangement he had with Dolan was he would pick up the car on the Friday.
Dolan then told the court ”I had rang Alan on the Thursday afternoon and told him his car was ready for collection, he never outlined to me during our conversation that he wouldn’t pick up the car.”
“However at the time of closing Alan hadn’t turned up, at that stage my units were full with cars so there was no space left to secure Alan’s car, so I decided the best thing to do was take it home with me.”
“I felt it was the safest thing to do, I didn’t want to leave the car lying outside the garage without being locked into one of the secure units.”
Later on that evening Gerry Dolan was the victim of a robbery in which his own car and that of Alan Ryan’s were stolen from his house. Burglars forced their way into his house through the bathroom window and took both sets of car keys that were lying on the table. The cars were found later on that morning on the Derry Rd and were both wrote off.
Judge Kelly said ”This is a most unfortunate state of affairs, I feel sorry for both parties here because both of you are victims.”
“There seemed to be some communication difficulty between both of you in terms of having the car picked up, but nobody could foresee what would happen.”
“However Mr Dolan you provide a service in which you are bound to return the car in the way it was given to you and ultimately through no fault of your own this didn’t happen.”
He awarded damages of €3,531.52 to Alan Ryan.