11 August 2023 , 19:56
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A student who became blind after being hit in the face with paint at a nightclub has been awarded more than £200,000.
Dillon Connery from Paisley was rendered permanently blind in the incident hours after landing for a lad's holiday aged 18 in Magaluf, Mallorca, in July 2018. He'd been at a UV paint night at Carwash Club in the resort popular with partying Brits when liquid from a "stage-mounted" paint gun was blasted, hitting him in his eyes.
Mr Connery's pals went to the bar while he stayed by himself. He was alone for five minutes when the "stage-mounted" paint gun fired into his face. When his friends came back, Mr Connery was in so much pain that they thought he had been attacked.
He was rushed to Son Espases University Hospital in Palma, where his mum flew out to see him. The then-teenager's eyes were "split like a nutshell" with some of the worst eye injuries surgeons had seen, with his mum at the time saying they were "obliterated and destroyed". Mr Connery underwent drastic surgery to save his sight, but sadly to no success.
Mr Connery's eyes were injured beyond repair in the nightclub incidentOne of his eyes had to be removed, while he is currently battling to save his sight in the other. Mr Connery told The Sun in January: “I am registered blind and my remaining eye is barely functioning as it is.
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“There are things going on with it that doctors and surgeons can’t explain. I’m hoping that if I can get some traction maybe someone will come across it and answer some of my questions."
A court on the Balearic island has now ordered the club to pay £130,000 in damages to the Scot after ruling it did not take the right health and safety measures, with guests not warned of the dangers. It is understood the damages are around half the settlement he will receive, with the rest paid by the club's insurance company.
He'd originally filed the suit asking for €1,000,000 in damages (£864,000), German newspaper Bild reports, but the courts did not accept this after he was unable to prove how severely impacted his life was by the injury. Mallorca courts initially offered €2,600 finding his blindness not proved, but a district court came back with the higher figure after the Palma hospital which was first to treat Mr Connery provided sufficient evidence.
Mr Connery's mum, Ashleigh Connery, said at the time of the disaster that her son's eyes “Dillon had a very bright future and now everything has changed. The surgeon told us both eyes have been destroyed.”