The High Court found that negligent ultrasound assessments led to the stillbirth of Dorothy Cunningham’s twin boys in August 1998. The preliminary judgment held the Coombe Lying-In Hospital, sonographer Siobhan Ni Scannaill and consultant obstetrician Bernard Stuart liable for the deaths. It found no liability against obstetrician Paul Bowman.
The twins were monochorionic, but the pregnancy was managed as though they were dichorionic. The court found that an early scan by radiologist Gerard Hurley indicated monochorionicity: his report described a “single gestation sac”, which ultrasound experts should have understood as a single chorion. The court found that Ni Scannaill and Stuart failed to recognise or act on that assessment and that Ni Scannaill’s later reports wrongly suggested dichorionic twins.
The judgment found Ni Scannaill negligent in her February scan and report, in repeating the dichorionic assessment in July, and in failing to resolve the conflict with Hurley’s report by consulting her supervisor or the report’s author. Stuart was found negligent for failing to investigate the conflicting assessments and allowing the dichorionic classification to remain the only one reported to Bowman.
Bowman relied on the hospital scan reports and was entitled to manage the pregnancy as dichorionic, the court found. It did not find him negligent for the scan frequency up to 32 weeks or for not arranging further growth scans after that point. Nor was he obliged to agree to Cunningham’s request for a caesarean section. The court accepted his evidence that, had he known the twins were monochorionic, he would have arranged delivery within a day or two of seeing her on 12 August. It found that the twins would have survived if delivered before 17 August and concluded that the negligence of Ni Scannaill and Stuart caused their stillbirths.
The judgment was confined to medical liability as a preliminary issue. It did not address damages, the statutory and limitation defences, or the separate counseling claim. Hurley’s claim had been struck out by consent, with no further order sought or made. The court also left open whether Stuart was liable to the hospital in an employment capacity and said it could hear further submissions on that point.