TikTok videos by worker in injuries case may have been filmed before he was hurt, court told
Tik Tok videos of injured factory worker may have been recorded when he was well - appeals court is told
Dancing and exercise videos posted on social media by a factory worker, who claimed he had to stop work due to injury after years of carrying heavy bags, may have been recorded some time earlier, when his health was good, a court has heard.
Meat factory worker turned TikTok influencer Mario Pompa (37) made a successful personal injuries claim against Hilton Foods (Ireland) Ltd in March this year.
He claimed he had to stop working in 2022 due to an ongoing neck, back and shoulder injury he sustained after regularly carrying bags weighing up to 25kg.
He alleged the injuries happened when he started doing heavy lifting in the 'spice room', where spices were mixed for sausage production.
He said he worked three 13-hour shifts a week and had to carry bags weighing between 10kg and 25kg, and got two 30-minute breaks.
Mr Pompa, originally from Slovakia but living in Ireland since 2005, was awarded nearly €18,000 in compensation at Dundalk Circuit Court.
It had been argued by the food company that video footage showing Mr Pompa doing dancing and gym exercise contradicted what he had told various doctors about the extent of his injuries.
The videos were from September 2021 – a month before he told a GP from the Injuries Resolution Board that he had not been able to go to a gym since 2020 due to persistent pain. Other videos of him dancing around the house were also played.
Judge Terence O'Sullivan said at the time that he would give Mr Pompa the benefit of the doubt and that he had not set out to completely lie or misrepresent his injuries.
Mario Pompa at Dundalk District Court. Picture: Arthur Carron
Hilton Foods appealed that ruling, and the appeals court in Dundalk sat yesterday under Justice Sara Phelan.
James McGowan SC, representing Mr Pompa, brought him through evidence that he had first gone to the doctor in August 2020 with shoulder pain, and that scans had shown he had rotator cuff tendonitis and a partial tear of a tendon, and should do physiotherapy sessions and take medication for pain.
He said his work continued until 2022 when he started to have problems with chest pain.
The cause of the chest pain was not being attributed to his work at the factory, the court heard.
Mr Pompa said he was no longer working for Hilton Foods because he had been 'fired' a few months ago.
His use of social media and TikTok started in 2019, the court heard, when he started posting fashion and clothes- related posts and then started doing dancing and singing videos lasting 30 seconds to a minute in duration.
He said he still does some videos and making the videos made him feel better. He said that at one point, four livestreams had earned him €1,500 in total.
Padraig McCartan SC put it to Mr Pompa that he was exaggerating his injuries and misled his own doctors and company doctors by not telling company doctors that he had received compensation at an earlier date for back injuries he sustained in a road traffic collision in 2008.
Videos of Mr Pompa, which he had himself posted to social media in September 2021 and February 2023, were shown to the court. They showed him exercising in a gym, throwing and catching a heavy 'medicine ball', and dancing with a vacuum cleaner.
Mr Pompa said that the fact that the videos were posted on certain dates did not mean they were recorded on those dates, and they may have been recorded in 2019 or 2020.
Mr McCartan said that Mr Pompa had not made that argument about the timing of the recording of the videos being possibly different to the publishing date at his previous Circuit Court case.
'He has the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of the existence of these videos and the use they were going to be put to in this court and the court below to try to explain away the relevance of the date they came into being,' he said.
'It's my submission that this is no more than a minor injury. There is no frozen shoulder here.
'There is complete recovery. If you accept the video evidence certainly in 2021 he had made a substantial recovery within one year.'
Mr McGowan said the fact that one video appears on two different days on his client's social media timeline proves the fact that the publishing date of the videos can be different from the day of recording.
'The dates that are seen does not prove the dates the recordings were made. Of course Mr Pompa has had an opportunity to consider the matter. He was ambushed with this stuff the first time around in the Circuit Court,' he said, adding that the defendants had not brought any evidence to show the date of posting the videos was the date of their creation.
Judge Phelan adjourned the matter and said she would issue her ruling on July 25.
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