High Court finds hospital negligent over birth injury

A YOUNG boy would not be severely mentally and physically disabled except for the "substandard and negligent" management of his birth at the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street in Dublin, a High Court judge found yesterday in his judgment on the State's longest-running birth injury case.

The parents of Paul Fitzpatrick said that while they were delighted to have won the case on behalf of their son, they had "nothing to celebrate".

"The National Maternity Hospital have ruined our lives and left us devastated and broken-hearted every day. They have taken away our son's right to a normal and healthy life and left him struggling and fighting for everything. Nothing can ever compensate him or us for what they have done," Michelle Gilroy and Paul Fitzpatrick said.

The hospital is now facing a legal costs bill of €4 million for the 54-day case, plus an expected multimillion-euro award of damages, after Mr Justice Daniel Herbert found it was liable for the devastating injuries sustained by six-year-old Paul Fitzpatrick in the circumstances of his birth at the hospital on December 26th, 2001.

The judgment was on the issue of liability only and the amount of damages will be assessed at a later hearing.

Paul, who is wheelchair-bound, and Ms Gilroy and Mr Fitzpatrick, of St Catherine's Close, Carman Hall, Dublin, were in court for yesterday's decision, which took 4½ hours to deliver. In his 109-page decision, the judge found Paul should have been delivered half an hour earlier than he was and, if that had occurred, he would not have sustained irreversible brain injury, leaving him totally dependent for the rest of his life.

He found that the hospital failed to properly interpret the foetal heart record at and after 6.30am on December 26th and, particularly after 7.10am, had failed to act correctly in light of that "very shocking" record.

He found that the child's brain injury began about 7.10am and continued occurring until he was delivered at 8.03am. The damages occurred slowly but over a period of less than one hour prior to 8.03am. By 7.38am, Paul had already suffered irreversible brain injury and every minute after that time resulted in more injury.

The evidence indicated that, when Paul was born, he was initially considered to have been born dead, the judge noted.

He found that the hospital had particularly failed in not calling the obstetrical duty registrar, whom the judge noted was in a nearby room, between 7.10am and 7.12am; in not delivering Paul between 7.33am and 7.38am and delivering him only at 8.03am; in not stopping the use of the delivery-accelerant drug, Oxytocin; and in not telling Paul's parents he was in distress and needed to be delivered immediately.

The judge said he was satisfied hospital staff knew there was an emergency involving Paul since at least 7.13am. He rejected claims by the hospital that the delay was excusable because of alleged untoward delay by Ms Gilroy in permitting a suction cup vaginal delivery and ruled there was no material or untoward delay by Ms Gilroy.