A High Court jury has awarded record damages of almost €3 million to a Dublin man, after it found he was unlawfully detained in a psychiatric hospital and had continued taking a treatment drug because a doctor threatened to lock him up if he failed to do so.
The award is the highest made by a High Court jury and comes after a €1.7 million award made earlier this month to a woman who was sexually and physically abused by her father over a number of years.
John Manweiller (64), Rosemount Court, Dundrum, and formerly of Cross Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin, was awarded €2,922,000 and costs - estimated at a total of €400,000 for both sides - at the close of his successful action against the Eastern Health Board.
Mr Manweiller alleged he was unlawfully detained in St Brendan's Hospital, Grangegorman, from September until December 1984 and also for a time in November 1991.
It is also claimed he was forced to take a drug named Clopixol when discharged from hospital, which he did not want to take.
After the jury members returned with their verdict yesterday evening following an absence of more than three hours, Mr Manweiller said: "I was always confident that I had a good case."
He added that he got some of the information for his case under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr Justice Éamon de Valera said there should be a payout of €250,000 to Mr Manweiller, pending an appeal by the EHB to the Supreme Court.
In his claim, Mr Manweiller sought damages for alleged personal injury, loss and damage sustained by him arising out of the negligence and breach of duty of the EHB, its servants or agents, and for trespass to his person, assault, battery, false imprisonment and breach of his constitutional rights, in particular his right to liberty. The EHB denied the claims.
Mr Justice de Valera and the jury were told by John Rogers SC, with Pádraic Dwyer, for Mr Manweiller, that in 1984 his client was living at home with his parents in Cross Avenue.
He became upset about his father's will and felt he was not told enough about it.
In September 1984 he was sorting tools and asked his mother, then aged 83, about missing tools. She said she knew nothing about them.
He raised his voice, and she cried. She left the house to go to his sister, Pauline.
Pauline and a brother, Colm, arrived at the house and told him he had to go to St Brendan's.
Mr Manweiller was driven to hospital and ended up being there until December 14th, 1984. In December a doctor noted he was to get Clopixol, a psychotic drug.
The following month he was given Clopixol, to which he had a reaction, and was given another drug to counteract it.
Mr Rogers said Mr Manweiller's case was that he should never had been in the hospital.
There was no legal authority for his being there and the way he was treated.
He was on Clopixol for years. In March 1991 he was transferred to a clinic in Baggot Street for treatment, but in November was readmitted to St Brendan's for nearly a month.
In 1993 he was moved to a clinic in Cork Street.
In October 1994 he was told he was to be taken off Clopixol and was weaned off it.
In their decision yesterday, the members of the jury found that a consultant, Dr Harry Burke, now retired, did not have "good and sufficient reason" to consider it proper to detain Mr Manweiller on September 27th, 1984.
The jury also decided that Dr Burke was negligent in prescribing Clopixol for Mr Manweiller on December 4th, 1984, and that Dr Burke and other doctors were negligent in continuing the Clopixol treatment until December 1995.
The jury also found that Dr Burke threatened to have Mr Manweiller locked up in a unit at St Brendan's if he failed to continue on Clopixol, and Mr Manweiller had submitted to that treatment solely because of the threat.
In addition the jury found that the EHB, its servants or agents, had aggravated the injury to Mr Manweiller by the manner in which the board conducted its defence of the action.