High Court ruling could force State to pay millions to hep C victims
The landmark decision means anyone who has already accepted awards of compensation from the statutory tribunal set up in 1997 can now bring their claims to the High Court in the hope they will get considerably bigger awards.
Yesterday’s test case was taken by a man who was awarded £125,000 after he became infected from contaminated blood products. He won the right to appeal the decision to the High Court.
Hundreds of other claimants awaiting the outcome of yesterday’s case are now expected to bring appeals against their awards from the tribunal. To date, more than 290m has been awarded to those infected with hep C.
The Minister for Health and Children submitted in a preliminary application that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the man had signed an acceptance of the tribunal’s award on November 24 1997. It was also argued that even if the court had jurisdiction to hear the appeal, it was brought out of time because of a statutory time limit under provisions of the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal Act, 1967.
Mr Justice Iarlaith O’Neill, in his reserved judgment yesterday, decided that the Act did not give rise to a statutory time limit of one month on making an appeal to the court.
He also ruled that the acceptance of an award of the tribunal did not exclude an appeal to the court and
that the court had jurisdiction to extend time for bringing an appeal.
The State may appeal yesterday’s decision. The judge said if the parties wanted to make any applications in relation to his judgment, he would hear them on September 11 next.
Mr Justice O’Neill said the purpose of the Act was to provide for the awarding of compensation to persons who had been the victims of a public health disaster. Many of them, at the time of the hearing of their claims before the tribunal, were in exceedingly poor health.
The Irish Haemophilia Society welcomed yesterday’s decision. Spokesperson Rosemary Daly said “People infected with hep C through blood and blood products have suffered greatly. Today’s judgment will deliver some justice to many people as it disregards the technical legal defence adopted by the Minister for Health.”
