Terminally ill woman in cervical case delay
Defence will now contest ‘each and every aspect’
PROMISES of speedy court resolutions for cancer-stricken women suing over allegedly misread CervicalCheck tests have been cast into doubt.
Yesterday, the High Court heard their cases were likely to run on into many weeks as the counsel for terminally ill mother Ruth Morrissey said they were being met with a defence contesting ‘each and every aspect of the case’.
The High Court case taken by Ms Morrissey, who developed cervical cancer after two smear tests were allegedly misread, has been put back to January following new lines of defence from the laboratories involved.
Judge Kevin Cross was told the labs involved in the screening now appeared to be claiming that ‘mistakes happen’ in the CervicalCheck programme. Ms Morrissey’s case had been due to restart yesterday, having begun in July as a matter of urgency, given her terminal diagnosis, and then adjourned to allow for further expert reports to be completed.
But last week, the court heard that the US-based Quest Diagnostics was now claiming that evidence from its 2009 slide bore no relation to the terminal cancer with which Ms Morrissey, 37, was diagnosed in 2014.
It was therefore denying that the Limerick woman’s cancer was caused as a result of any error in the reading of its slide.
Yesterday, Ms Morrissey’s counsel, Jeremy Maher SC, said they were claiming it was the best programme we could have, but that ‘mistakes happen’.
Mr Maher said they were being met with a defence where experts were contesting ‘each and every aspect of the case’.
And he said Ms Morrissey – who is undergoing treatment and has been told she is likely to die next year or in 2020 – needed more time for her experts to examine the claims made by the laboratories, and to conduct further research themselves.
Judge Cross queried if such a tactic might be the pattern in such cases in the future, and was told by Mr Maher that it ‘may be’. Judge Cross said: ‘What your saying to me (is that) tort system is not going to be efficient to resolve these disputes – each of them is going to require an essay – then cases supposed to take a few weeks might take many weeks.’
Mr Maher replied that there was a ‘real risk in this case’, saying they had initially expected to resolve it in four weeks but that it now ‘might take double that time’.
Ms Morrissey has sued for damages for alleged negligence and breach of duty by the HSE and the two labs which she says wrongly analysed her routine smear tests in 2009 and 2012.
Judge Cross advised all parties to see what could be done to focus on the ‘real issues’, and to have ‘sensible discussions’ to see if the length of the case could be shortened. Granting an adjournment, he said the case will be mentioned again on October 26, and the hearing will resume on January 29.