Parent Praises Legal System

Last week the High Court heard an Apology from Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children read out to the parents of Jude Miley.  Jude’s father Greville issued a Statement castigating the lack of candour on the part of the Hospital post the catastrophe and went on to praise the legal system for uncovering what had happened.  Greville said,

“As a result of this surgical error, Jude tragically sustained permanent and catastrophic brain damage.  

Were that not bad enough, the lack of honesty and frankness on the part of the Hospital in respect of this error, has fundamentally undermined our confidence in the Irish Health Service.  Undoubtedly, shortly after the catastrophe, all medical personnel involved knew what happened, and why it happened.   Despite this, we were led to believe that this was simply an unfortunate complication of the operation. We were told it was just “one of those things”. We later learned this certainly was not the case.  The hospital even tried to lay blame with the manufacturers of the suture, as if there was some fault with the suture material itself.  There was no fault with the suture; there was fault with the manner in which the suture was placed and left, untrimmed, beside Jude’s little beating heart.

We are so lucky in this country that we have a Court system capable of recalibrating the inequality that exists between the injured patients and the powerful Medical Profession. We were misled and stonewalled. Only for the legal system, we don’t believe we would have achieved what has been accomplished here today. A lot of people criticise the legal system, but we can’t compliment it enough. It has worked for Jude. What didn’t work for Jude however was the failure of the hospital to engage with us and with the legal system in an honest, open and integral fashion. If they had done so, our journey would have been so much easier and Jude rehabilitated far sooner.”

Commenting on the case Jude’s Solicitor Ernest Cantillon stated,

“So often we have lawyers criticised.  It is nice to see the system praised, because the system did work in this case.”