Derek Achong

A woman has failed in her bid to seek com­pen­sa­tion for the chil­dren of her sis­ter, who died af­ter un­der­go­ing two surg­eries to ad­dress in­juries she sus­tained from falling from a chair at work over 14 years ago.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Mon­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion from Med­corp Lim­it­ed to dis­miss the case which was brought by Suzanne Dick­son on be­half of her sis­ter Stacey-Ann Singh’s two daugh­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, on Au­gust 12, 2008, Singh was work­ing as a cus­tomer ser­vice of­fi­cer at Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed’s branch at Park Street, Port-of-Spain, when the chair she was sit­ting on col­lapsed.

In Sep­tem­ber 2009 and ear­ly 2011, Singh un­der­went two sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre, which is owned by Med­corp, to ad­dress her in­juries to her left leg and back.

Dur­ing the first surgery, the tip of the scalpel used by the sur­geon hired by Singh al­leged­ly broke off and re­mained in her body.

Singh went in­to a co­ma fol­low­ing the sec­ond pro­ce­dure and even­tu­al­ly died on May 11, 2011.

Dick­son filed a law­suit against the three doc­tors who per­formed the pro­ce­dures, Med­corp, and the bank seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion.

She sub­se­quent­ly dis­con­tin­ued the case against the bank and two of the doc­tors. The oth­er doc­tor then suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to have the case dis­missed.

In his de­ci­sion, Mo­hammed had to de­ter­mine whether the med­ical neg­li­gence case could con­tin­ue against Med­corp.

He agreed with Med­corp’s at­tor­neys over de­fi­cien­cies in Dick­son’s case against it.

Mo­hammed said, “Hav­ing re­gard to the ev­i­dence ad­vanced for my con­sid­er­a­tion I am not sat­is­fied that it is of ad­e­quate suf­fi­cien­cy that the claimant can point fin­gers at the de­fen­dant and find suc­cess at the con­clu­sion of a tri­al.”

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny claimed that it did not owe Singh a du­ty of care as the pri­vate doc­tors hired by her to per­form the pro­ce­dures sim­ply used its fa­cil­i­ties and nurs­ing staff.

It al­so con­tend­ed that even if it had a du­ty of care to Singh, Dick­son could not prove that her death was due to the lev­el of care pro­vid­ed by its nurs­ing staff.

In his judg­ment, Mo­hammed ruled that the com­pa­ny did in fact have a du­ty of care through its staff to mon­i­tor Singh’s res­pi­ra­to­ry rate and her symp­toms.

How­ev­er, he agreed that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence from med­ical ex­perts re­tained by Dick­son that the com­pa­ny’s staff breached their du­ty and caused her death.

“While it is clear to this court that some­thing went ter­ri­bly wrong par­tic­u­lar­ly in the days fol­low­ing her sec­ond surgery, the an­swer to that ques­tion on what went wrong re­mains un­clear,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

“I al­so do not find the ev­i­dence of the claimant to be of suf­fi­cient strength to war­rant a fuller in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the facts at tri­al,” he added.

As part of his rul­ing in the case, Dick­son was or­dered to pay the com­pa­ny’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit.

Dick­son was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Ki­jana de Sil­va, and Dawn Seecha­ran. Med­corp was rep­re­sent­ed by Si­mon de la Bastide and Tamilee Bud­hu.