‘Shattered’ woman awarded €273,223
A few days after the procedure, Alison was chatting with nurses and asked if she was to have any more children, could she have them by section. They told her talk to her doctor.
Her gynaecologist was Dr Michael Neary. He came to visit her in the public ward and she asked him the same question. He said no.
What he told her next changed her life and left her completely shattered.
Dr Neary said he had had to remove her womb and that she had had a hysterectomy. He said he had saved her life and that he could have sent her "son home without a mammy".
He said she had lost lots of blood and that he had never witnessed anything like it.
When at the six-week check up she met Dr Neary again, she told him she could not sleep and could not come to terms with what happened to her.
He said if he told her what happened on the night after the operation she would never sleep again and she was better off not knowing. He told her to go home and get on with her life.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Richard Johnson found Dr Neary to have been negligent. He awarded Alison 273,223.
Mr Justice Richard Johnson said Dr Neary had carried out certain procedures at the time and that, on the balance of probability, Mrs Gough's bleeding could have been stopped and the operation would not have been necessary.
The court heard that Dr Neary whose name was removed from the Irish Medical Register in 1999 after other High Court proceedings had carried out one hysterectomy for every 20 caesarean births, while the average at Ireland's National Maternity Hospital in Dublin was one in 441.
Mr Justice Johnson said that there had been evidence from an obstetrician called on behalf of Mrs Gough that in the period between 1990 and 1998 there was not a single case of caesarean hysterectomy of a priva gravida (first pregnancy) patient in
the National Maternity Hospital.
The judge said both sides in the case were in agreement regarding the two main issues: did Dr Neary take all conservative steps, including administration of drugs that should have been taken before the hysterectomy; and did he persist long enough in them, and had he persisted for longer with them would the haemorrhage have stopped.
After the judgment, Mrs Gough, who also had costs for the eight-day hearing awarded in her favour, hugged her husband Fergus and other members of her family. She said she was delighted and relieved at the ruling.
Her solicitor, Sarah McDonald said Mrs Gough had been finally allowed to get to the truth of what happened.
