Medical Council wins ruling on surgeon case

A Supreme Court decision has cleared the way for the Medical Council to expand its inquiry into allegations of professional misconduct by consultant surgeon Michael Shine in relation to his treatment of a number of former patients.

The council had appealed against a High Court decision that restricted its inquiry into allegations concerning nine former patients and restrained an inquiry into allegations concerning five others.

In the High Court in December 2006, the late Mr Justice Diarmuid O’Donovan said he would permit the Council’s Fitness to Practice Committee to inquire into Dr Shine’s treatment of the nine patients.

However, he restrained an inquiry concerning five other patients on grounds this would expose Dr Shine to double jeopardy as he had been acquitted of criminal charges relating to those patients.

Giving the unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding the appeal, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns today said the Medical Council committee could continue its inquiry into the additional five complaints.

He agreed with the Medical Council that, when Dr Shine secured leave to bring his judicial review challenge to the inquiry, the grounds for that challenge had not included double jeopardy.

In any event, the judge said he was quite satisfied this case did not permit the application of the principle of "double jeopardy" as it did not involve one criminal trial being followed by another.

The proposed inquiry by the Medical Council was “in a different context and for different purposes, including the protection of the public.”

Ms Justice Susan Denham, Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman, Mr Justice Nial Fennelly and Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan concurred with Mr Justice Kearns’s judgment.

In his High Court action, Dr Shine had sought to restrain an inquiry into complaints of indecent assault by a number of males aged between 10 and 20 years arising from events that allegedly occurred while they were being examined at Dr Shine’s consulting rooms in Drogheda and at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.

The alleged events mainly took place during the early 1970s, early 1980s and 1990s, and most of the complainants are now aged in their late thirties and early forties.