Widow loses professional negligence appeal
It has been revealed that a widow who filed a medical negligence case against a doctor, has lost her appeal.
The woman filed a professional negligence suit against the doctor who treated her husband in the weeks before his death, in December 1999.
The 66-year-old retired bank manager, died at Belfast City Hospital shortly after Christmas 1999. He had been transferred there from the Royal after first being admitted to the Ulster Independent Clinic.
Although a post-mortem report attributed his death to liver cancer, his wife blamed blood poisoning after a bile duct was perforated.
All claims of improper care made by the claimant over the treatment of her husband were dismissed by a High Court this week. The widow now faces legal compensation claim bills that are thought could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The verdict cleared the Royal Victoria and Belfast City Hospitals, the Ulster Independent clinic, and their staff.
The university lecturer fought the 45-day trial without a lawyer. After the ruling, she said she planned to appeal both the judgement and costs order.
A long battle to seek justice
The judge, Mr Justice Gillen, noted that there was no evidence of negligent or incompetent care. He also did not find any grounds for claims made against doctors named as defendants, declaring that he became increasingly convinced that the widow lacked credibility.
He stated: “She has become consumed by a smouldering sense of injustice over the years since his death which I am afraid is quite unjustified on the facts.
“I have come to the melancholic conclusion that she has allowed this misplaced sense of injustice to overwhelm her judgment and create a false and dangerously selective recollection of events which, over time, she may even have come to believe in some instances actually happened, notwithstanding the inherent unlikelihood of so much that she asserted.
“I regret to say that from time to time even the most implausible of propositions and allegations commended themselves to her where she felt they served her purposes, heedless of the stress that she has undoubtedly occasioned to those who felt the weight of her accusations.
“Her inventory of complaint was seared through with thoroughly implausible allegations of fabrication, dissimulation and mendacity.”
He also dismissed her allegations of assault and false imprisonment made against the Doctor, a consultant in gastroenterology at the Royal.
The judge added that the professional was a “deeply reflective physician who has been profoundly wounded by the attacks on his integrity and professional expertise mounted and maintained by [the claimant] over the last 10 years.”
The patient’s family, who did not support his second wife’s claim, expressed their relief that the long battle and ordeal was finally over.
“We take comfort in the knowledge that [he] received qualified and sensitive medical attention right up until the time of his unfortunate death.
“Today a cloud has been lifted from our family, and we are relieved [his] memory can finally be left to rest in peace,” a family member said.
Updated on 03/02/2010