The High Court declined to determine a preliminary issue in Patrick Keeve’s claim against the Health Service Executive and Letterkenny General Hospital, finding that the issue could not be answered clearly on the pleadings and limited evidence available.
The preliminary issue, directed in 2017, asked whether Mr Keeve could maintain a nervous shock claim arising from witnessing back pain suffered by his late wife, Mary Keeve, which he alleged followed a failure to diagnose a disc lesion. The court did not decide whether his claim could succeed, whether the defendants were negligent, or whether they owed him a duty of care.
Mr Keeve’s 2014 personal injuries proceedings allege that the defendants’ treatment of his wife from July 2011 to February 2012 caused him physical harm and emotional distress. He says he witnessed her severe pain and felt helpless, and that his efforts to alert the defendants to her condition were not heeded. The pleadings also allege depression, hypertension, high blood pressure and cardiac pain. His wife died in July 2012 from a cause the pleadings describe as unrelated to her back condition.
The defendants argued that nervous shock requires a recognised psychiatric illness induced by shock, and that gradual distress from witnessing pain over months does not meet that test. They also disputed that Mr Keeve could establish a claim based on his wife’s treatment. The plaintiff’s counsel argued that the question was whether the claim could be maintained, with success to depend on evidence.
During the hearing, Mr Keeve sought to amend the pleadings to describe his claim in more detail, including allegations that the defendants ignored his concerns and put pressure on him to care for his wife after she was discharged. The court noted that the proposed amendments placed greater emphasis on his dealings with the defendants, while the original claim also referred to injury from witnessing his wife’s suffering. It was unclear whether the complaints about how the defendants responded to him were intended as a separate cause of action or as part of the nervous shock claim.
Justice MacGrath said the nature of the claim and the circumstances in which a duty of care was said to arise were unclear. There was little evidence before the court, and the pleadings were acknowledged to be unsatisfactory. Even considering the proposed amendments, he concluded that determining the preliminary issue in those circumstances would be inappropriate. The court therefore did not accede to the defendants’ application. The judgment does not determine the underlying negligence claim or the proposed amendment application.