Medical Negligence
McGarr Solicitors one of Ireland’s Best Law Firms 2022
Everyone likes to have their work recognised, but there is a particular satisfaction which comes from having your expertise recognised by your peers and colleagues. So it was a great honour to find that McGarr Solicitors had been listed as one of the top 75 Law Firms in Ireland by Statista, in conjunction with the Sunday Independent. It was particularly welcome that we were recognised for both our medical negligence work and our data protection expertise. Internationally, Statista has partnered […]
Medical Negligence*- Case Report on hospital liability
Court: UK Court of Appeal March 2017 Facts: The Plaintiff suffered a head injury from an assault. He attended at the Defendant’s hospital – the A & E dept., with a friend. The receptionist took his details and told him he would have to wait and it would be up to five hours before he was seen. In fact the hospital operated a system of having such patients seen within thirty minutes by a triage nurse. The receptionist did not […]
Medical Negligence and “Doctor X”
In January 2008 we reported the publication of a book by an anonymous Irish doctor, detailing the failings of the Irish hospital system. See a report HERE. The doctor was running a website and was featured speaking on national radio. The website is now not to be found and the book is not readily available. Medical errors happen everywhere; they are not unique to Ireland. In the USA and the UK, the responsible authorities collect statistics to find out why […]
How to read the “news” on medical negligence
According to the Irish Independent, a High Court judge (Judge Irvine) has urged “an overhaul of negligence cases”. The newspaper goes on to report what the judge actually said; that she believes “new protocols and rules of disclosure would lead to early resolution and early admission of liability when justified” [in “medical negligence” cases]. There are two ideas in the judge’s beliefs, both good; that early resolution and early admission of liability are desirable goals, and that new protocols and […]
The Ambulance Service
Medical negligence is somewhat of a specialist area for lawyers. Not every solicitor will firstly recognise a culpable act of commission or omission by a medical person and secondly will know how to create a case that will win in court. The ambulance service, the humblest element of the health care system is the exception to this. When you call for an ambulance, you need it urgently, usually. The despatcher will, usually, elicit the cause or nature of the emergency […]
A Death in Hospital
The Vatican is an uncivilised place. A place is uncivilised if a person may die and the cause of death remains unexplained. This happened on the death, in the Vatican, of Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, in 1978. He was Pope for one month. What if he had died in Ireland? Depending on the circumstances there would be an inquest. An inquest is an inquiry by a coroner into the causes and circumstances of certain deaths. A death such […]
Moods
We are a firm of lawyers. Our website should deal with legal subjects. Hopefully, we do not lapse from that rule and, without going to the trouble of conducting an audit, we think we do not. It’s a broad rule and allows us to write (polemically if necessary) about such diverse topics as road accidents, accidents at work, medical negligence, planning act infringements and fingerprints. We could, if necessary, even comment on Bilbo Baggins’ contract with the dwarves at the […]
How to read a newspaper (continued)
Noted in the Irish Times, 2nd February 2013, page 6. “Eoin was born in moderate condition at 6.35 am on July 30th, 2002, without any inherent defect or genetic abnormality, as the hospital, among various claims, had alleged”. This sentence means the hospital alleged Eoin … “was without any inherent defect or genetic abnormality”. This cannot have been the case; there would have been no proceedings, for the newspaper to report, otherwise. IT SHOULD READ: “Eoin was born in moderate […]
How to request your Medical Records and pay less
Hospitals and doctors’ offices in Ireland will give a person their medical records if they ask for them. Mostly. Eventually. When they get to it. And, sometimes, if you pay them over €100 (for a large file). But, like so much else in the legal world, there is a set of magic words you can incant to place a 40 day deadline on the delivery of your papers and limit the cost to €6.35. You invoke the Data Protection Acts […]
Medical Negligence and the Doctors’ bill
Medical negligence is a serious problem in Ireland. It needs to be treated in a serious manner.