Family awarded €490,000 after husband's heart problems were not detected

Failure to detect a man’s heart problems resulted in a father-of-two dying suddenly at the age of 42 and today his family was awarded almost €500,000 in settlement of their civil action against the Health Service Executive.

Gerard O’Leary of Dooneen, Kilcummin, Killarney, County Kerry, was a mechanic with Liebherr and from a well-known family operating an electrical business in Killarney. He died on January 21, 2004.

Mr Justice Michael Hanna described it as a case of undetected cardiac problems and approved the settlement offer that was made on behalf of the HSE to Mrs Sheila O’Leary and her two sons, Keith, 21, and Nigel, 19.

The plaintiff’s senior counsel, Dr John O’Mahony, outlined the background to the case. The late Mr O’Leary was seen at Tralee General Hospital in March 2003 where an echocardiogram was carried out.

Dr O’Mahony said that difficulty with a heart valve should have seen Mr O’Leary referred to a cardiologist.

“Had that been done he would have received the appropriate treatment and lived a full life on the balance of probabilities,” Dr O’Mahony said.

However, in January 2004, the O’Leary family were about to move into a new house at Elm Grove, Ballydribbeen, Killarney, County Kerry, and as Mr O’Leary was doing some work on the house he became very unwell.

An ambulance from Tralee was delayed in getting to the scene. Mr O’Leary arrived at the hospital at 12.55am and died at 1.25am.

Dr O’Mahony SC said: “There was clear negligence on the part of the HSE.”

Mr Justice Hanna said that even with the most apparently clear-cut cases of medical negligence there were risks to the plaintiff in bringing a case to trial rather than accepting a settlement offer. In this case the settlement figure was €490,000 and costs.

Afterwards, solicitor for the O’Leary family, Andrew O’Connell said, “The O’Leary family express their gratitude and respect for the way in which it was dealt with. There is now a sense of closure, they can now face the future without their much-loved and much-missed husband and father.”

Mr Justice Hanna expressed his sympathies to Mrs O’Leary and her two sons in the High Court, sitting in Cork, and said the law was an imperfect instrument for dealing with such a tragedy but it was the best that could be done.

The cause of Mr O’Leary’s death was ventricular hypertrophy in association with aortic and mitral valvular disease.