A woman who in March was awarded compensation for an unnecessary symphysiotomy operation has had the verdict of her symphysiotomy compensation claim upheld by the Supreme Court.
Olivia Kearney (60) from Castlebellingham in County Louth was awarded 450,000 Euros in symphysiotomy operation compensation by the High Court earlier this year after a ten-year legal battle against the Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, where the procedure was carried out without her knowledge or consent in 1969.
The hospital appealed the judgement, claiming that it was not liable on the grounds that the procedure was medically and ethically justified at the time by reference to the thinking of clinicians who shared the same views on symphysiotomy as Dr Gerard Connolly – the obstetrician who had performed the unnecessary operation.
However, Mr Justice MacMenamin, speaking on behalf of the five-judge court that had unanimously rejected the appeal said that “the procedure was wrong, even by the standards of the time, and there was no rationale for it”. The Supreme Court ruled that “the entire fault for what happened to [Olivia] lay with the obstetrician who carried out the procedure, the late Dr Gerard Connolly, and no one else”.
The Supreme Court however reduced the amount of the symphysiotomy compensation claim award to 325,000 Euros – stating that Mr Justice Sean Ryan´s High Court award had been the maximum he was allowed to confer based on “a person whose life had effectively been ruined”. Mr Justice MacMenamin said that he had no intention of underestimating the very serious nature of the injuries suffered by Olivia, but they fell short of the criteria for the highest level of damages to be awarded and pointed out that Olivia had been in gainful employment for twenty-five years.