The High Court has set aside and struck out proceedings against a Spain-based surgeon, ruling that the plaintiff had not shown that Irish courts had jurisdiction to hear her claim against him alongside her settled claim over a 2013 road traffic accident.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Mark Heslin on 31 March 2023, concerned an application by the second defendant, a neurosurgeon domiciled in Spain. The plaintiff relied on Article 8(1) of the Brussels Recast Regulation, which can allow connected claims against multiple defendants to be heard where one is domiciled. She argued that hearing the claims together would avoid a risk of irreconcilable judgments.
The court stressed that the plaintiff had to establish unequivocally that the exception applied. It found the claims arose from separate events more than four years apart: the first concerned alleged negligent driving in a December 2013 collision near Dublin Airport; the second concerned alleged negligence and breach of contract in spinal surgeries performed in Barcelona in March and October 2018. The surgeon was not involved in the collision.
The plaintiff alleged that the crash aggravated her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and that the later surgeries were unnecessary and caused serious harm. Those allegations were not determined in this jurisdiction application. The judge said his examination of the evidence did not decide disputed facts in the underlying claims.
The plaintiff’s claim against the driver remained ongoing when the surgeon was joined to the proceedings in December 2020. It was later settled, and the claim against the driver was struck out by consent in February 2021. The judge said that settlement could be considered, but it was not decisive: even without taking it into account, the plaintiff had not met the test for Article 8(1).
The judge found no sufficient overlap in the factual or legal issues and concluded that it was not foreseeable to the surgeon that he would face an Irish claim arising from surgeries in Barcelona within proceedings concerning a Dublin-area road accident. He granted the relief sought on the surgeon’s motion, setting aside and striking out the proceedings against him for want of jurisdiction.
The surgeon was entirely successful in the application. The judge expressed a preliminary view that costs should follow the event and directed the parties to seek agreement on the final order, including costs. If they could not agree, short written submissions were to be filed by 28 April 2023.