A man spent years in the "blind hope" that his severely brain-damaged wife might wake up from a coma into which she lapsed around the time of the delivery of her twin girls and in which she remained for 19 years, the High Court heard yesterday.
Padraic Keane, Abbeyknockmoy, Co Galway, has brought an action for damages in relation to the medical treatment of his wife, Agnes, a computer plant worker, who died in July 2002, 19 years after she went into a coma following the delivery of her daughters in 1983.
The girls, now 22, were delivered by Caesarean section. It was Ms Keane's first pregnancy.
The proceedings were initiated on behalf of his wife in 2000 by Mr Keane, a storeman, and, after her death, were continued on his own behalf and on behalf of the couple's daughters.
It is alleged there was a failure to diagnose that Ms Keane was expecting twins before her admission to hospital and a failure to intervene in the pregnancy before a pre-eclampsia process became uncontrolled and eclampsia developed.
The proceedings came before Mr Justice John Quirke yesterday via a preliminary application to stop the action by the defendants - the Western Health Board and a personal representative of the estate of Dr Fergus Meehan, a consultant obstetrician who died in 1991 and who was allegedly responsible for Ms Keane's medical care during her pregnancy.
After hearing from counsel for the parties, Mr Justice Quirke dismissed the health board's application and directed the case could proceed against it. While there was inordinate delay in the tragic and extraordinary circumstances of the case, he would direct the action could proceed.
He was also not satisfied that the board had substantiated its claim that because of a number of factors including delay, it would not receive a fair trial.
Mr Justice Quirke said he would give his decision later on the application by the personal representative of Dr Meehan to restrain the action against him.
