The High Court found that a pathology laboratory mix-up at St. Vincent’s Hospital led to Alan O’Gorman being wrongly diagnosed with stomach cancer and undergoing an unnecessary total gastrectomy. Mr Justice Lavan entered judgment against five hospital defendants for agreed damages of €450,000, and declined to find negligence by the surgeon who performed the operation.
Mr O’Gorman, then 21, was admitted to the hospital on 14 February 2002 with abdominal pain. During surgery the next day, a biopsy from an ulcer in his stomach was sent for frozen-section analysis. The judgment says his tissue was mixed up with a sample from another patient, who had cancer. The report wrongly indicated cancer in Mr O’Gorman. On 19 March 2002, he underwent a total gastrectomy. Examination of the removed stomach found no cancer, and the error was discovered.
The hospital accepted that its pathology staff had caused the mix-up. An investigation commissioned by the hospital identified gaps in procedures for handling samples arriving close together, as well as a failure in communication. The judge said the investigation’s account was admitted in evidence, but no defendants gave evidence about what happened in the laboratory. The court therefore could not determine who was responsible for the mislabelling, though it concluded that the error occurred in the pathology department.
The judge held that the claim against the first five defendants succeeded. As the judgment explains, the first defendant was the hospital’s nominee; it also says the individual employee responsible could not be identified, so no decree could be made against any of the other hospital employees named in the action.
The hospital defendants argued that the surgeon, Mr Geoghegan, should bear responsibility because he relied on the diagnosis and did not perform an endoscopy before the gastrectomy. The judge rejected that claim. He accepted evidence from the surgeon’s witnesses that, in the exceptional circumstances, an endoscopy was not necessary after the prior investigations, and that surgeons could rely on the hospital’s sophisticated pathology department. He described the opposing expert’s view that an endoscopy was needed as a counsel of perfection based on hindsight and concluded it would be unfair to find the surgeon negligent.
The judgment records that Mr O’Gorman’s claims against the consultant histopathologist and the surgeon had been dismissed during trial after discussions between counsel. The remaining disputes included contribution and indemnity claims between the hospital defendants and the surgeon. The judge’s conclusion that the surgeon was not negligent resolved the hospital’s claim against him on that basis. The judgment does not state a further order on the surgeon’s contribution claim.