Two consultant obstetricians have opened a court challenge claiming the Medical Council acted unfairly and unlawfully in finding them guilty of professional misconduct.
The council made the finding in connection with reports prepared by Dr John Murphy and Prof Walter Prendiville exonerating the obstetric practice of Dr Micheal Neary at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
The High Court proceedings arise after Prof Prendiville, Dr Murphy and Dr Bernard Stuart, of the Coombe Women's Hospital, were asked in 1998 by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association to review the files on a number of Dr Neary's patients at the Drogheda hospital. They later produced reports which effectively exonerated Dr Neary's practice.
Dr Neary has since been struck off the Medical Register arising from performing unnecessary Caeserean hysterectomies on women he attended in chilbirth the hospital.
Last February, the Medical Council upheld recommendations from its Fitness to Practise Committee that the three obstetricians be found guilty of professional misconduct. The committee recommended that sanctions be imposed on the three consultants but the Medical Council decided to impose no sanctions in any of the three cases.
Prof Prendiville, of South Circular Road, Dublin, was found guilty of one of twelve allegations before the committee. He was found guilty of professional misconduct relating to the failure to apply the standard of conduct expected by a medical practitioner in compiling the report.
Dr Murphy, of the Blackrock Clinic and a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, was found guilty of three allegations of professional misconduct. These related to his statement that Dr Neary had no case to answer and that he should be allowed to continue working at the hospital without any restrictions on his practice.
Dr Murphy and Prof Prendiville initiated challenges to the findings last March. Both doctors say their review of Dr Neary's conduct was carried out under great pressure and in the absence of "the full picture" which eventually emerged in relation to Dr Neary.
They are claiming unfair procedures, unlawfulness and irrationality in the Medical Council's findings and have also raised constitutional and human rights issues.
The case before Mr Justice Peter Kelly is expected to take four days to hear.