A woman with cervical cancer, whose lawyers asked the Health Service Executive (HSE) to have her case alleging a misreporting of her smear slides settled before her death, has died, the High Court has heard.
Mr Justice Paul Coffey was told that the 59-year-old woman, who cannot be identified, died over the weekend.
A part of her case has fallen away due to her death, as the HSE and laboratories involved declined a plea from her lawyers last week to preserve her access to general damages after death if the action was successful.
Generally, under section 7(2) of the Civil Liability Act of 1961, a claim for general damages for pain and suffering is not maintained after the death of the person allegedly caused to suffer.
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The woman’s lawyers had also asked the HSE and laboratories to settle the case, which was due for trial in the High Court in July. All the claims made in the action are denied.
‘Common decency’
At one stage last week, Mr Justice Paul Coffey told the parties they now find themselves “at the edge of what the law can do” and it was now a case “where common decency and honour become involved”.
As a result, mediation talks began in the case late last week, but the woman died before those were able to reach a resolution.
In the High Court on Tuesday, senior counsel for the woman and her family, Jeremy Maher, instructed by Cian O’Carroll Solicitors, said mediation talks took place again last Friday but did not resolve the case and the woman later died.
He said the case was due to go ahead on July 5th and he asked the court to now vacate that date as the proceedings will have to be reconstituted. He said the action will have to be now brought by the woman’s husband.
‘Very, very saddened’
Mr Justice Coffey adjourned the case, saying he was “very very saddened " to hear of the woman’s death. He conveyed his “deepest sympathy” to her husband and family.
The woman sued the HSE along with laboratory Eurofins Biomnis Ireland Limited of Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin. The US laboratory CPL, based in Austin, Texas, which examined the woman’s August 2010 cervical smear slide, was added to the proceedings as a third party.
At issue in the case are two cervical smear slides taken under the CervicalCheck national screening programme in February and August 2010.
She claimed that had smear samples taken in February or August 2010 been correctly reported, she would have been treated by curative surgery and would not have developed invasive cervical cancer.
Instead, she said she underwent treatment with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy and last October was diagnosed as having widespread metastatic disease. It was claimed that because of the alleged delay in diagnosis the woman lost the opportunity to be cured and her life expectancy was severely impaired and limited to months rather than years.
All the claims are denied.