UK drum dealer wins hearing…hearing

The owner of a Scottish music shop has been awarded £17,000 in costs after a customer took him to court claiming she had developed tinnitus because he crashed a cymbal near her ear.

According to the Perth Courier newspaper, Dorothy Brannigan had gone into RWJ Drum Store in Perth, Scotland, to buy earplugs for her son, a student sound engineer. The 54-year-old claimed she was left with ringing in her ears after owner Kevin Smith twice struck a large cymbal six feet away from her.

Seeking damages for £20,000, she said as a result of her condition she had difficulty sleeping, was anxious about flying and had struggled at work because noise aggravated her condition.

Smith said: “This has been a four-year nightmare. I’ve received more than 4,000 messages from folk in the music industry, who are all breathing a sigh of relief that the case has been dropped. Had she won, it would have opened the doors for thousands of claims the world over against musicians and bands – and that would have had a huge effect on the whole music business.”

He added: “A month before the original hearing was due, the woman’s solicitors employed an independent sound expert to come into the shop to take sound readings from the crashing of various cymbals, as they were not content with a report provided to them by an independent sound expert appointed by our solicitors.

“We cooperated fully with the carrying out of these sound tests to the degree that we closed our business for a whole morning and a good portion of the afternoon to accommodate them.

“The situation described by the woman in her original complaint was replicated exactly to her satisfaction as she was present in the shop that morning to make sure this was the case. The sound readings taken that morning were consistent within a single decibel of those taken by the independent sound expert appointed by our own legal team.”

Brannigan’s solicitors made an offer of settlement by dropping their original claim of £20,000 to £5,000, but the offer was declined by Smith’s solicitors.