The High Court has dismissed a personal injuries action brought by Nigel Holmes over an alleged MRSA infection following treatment at Tallaght Hospital, after finding that the case had been left inactive for cumulative periods exceeding five years.
Mr Holmes was injured in a motorcycle crash on 20 March 2005 and was treated for a fractured femur, pelvis and dislocated hip. His case was not directed at that initial treatment. Instead, he alleged that during later treatment he was placed in an MRSA-infected area and contracted the infection because of failures in hospital infection-control systems.
He issued proceedings in March 2007 against several State and health defendants. The claim against the Health Service Executive and the Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, incorporating the National Children’s Hospital, remained in being when those defendants applied in May 2024 to have it struck out for delay.
Ms Justice Sara Phelan examined a litigation history spanning more than 17 years. She accepted that some delays were explained, including periods associated with Mr Holmes’s ill health and difficulties obtaining hospital records. She also found that some delay connected with obtaining records could not fairly be placed entirely at the defendants’ door.
However, other periods were not adequately explained. In particular, the court identified an almost five-year period from 2014 during which there was no satisfactory explanation for the failure to progress the claim, as well as later inactivity exceeding two years.
Applying the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Kirwan v Connors, the judge found a cumulative period of complete inactivity of more than five years. At that point, dismissal should follow unless a pressing and exceptional requirement of justice justified allowing the action to continue.
The court found no such exceptional circumstance. It also rejected an argument that the defendants had acquiesced in the delay.
The claim was dismissed. The court indicated that the successful defendants should ordinarily receive their costs, but left the precise costs order for further submissions at a hearing listed for 27 January 2026.