While CervicalCheck cases rarely hit the headlines anymore, the aggressive defence of these cases by laboratories and the HSE continues to be a problem. Four years on from when the then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar promised women that the State would stand by them against the laboratories, we see in this trial, settled in favour of our clients after 15 days at hearing, that the HSE was actually represented by Clinical Pathology Laboratories Incorporated (CPL), the Texas-based laboratory that misread the smear in this case. The same cooperation between State and the laboratories to whom Irish cervical screening was outsourced in 2008 has characterised so many similar cases over the last four years since Vicky Phelan’s landmark action against the same Texas-based CPL.
In this most recent case, after a month at trial, our client not only achieved an important outcome for her own care and future but her determination has clarified a long-running issue that was complicating litigation for many other cases. Those cases will now benefit greatly from the outcome of this case. This is yet another example of the collective concern that women bringing these CervicalCheck related cases have shown again and again for each other, taking on challenges and even risk so that principles can be established and then relied upon by others just as Vicky Phelan, the late Ruth Morrissey, and the late Patricia Carrick did in each of their landmark cases.
In this most recent case, after a month at trial, our client not only achieved an important outcome for her own care and future but her determination has clarified a long-running issue that was complicating litigation for many other cases. Those cases will now benefit greatly from the outcome of this case. This is yet another example of the collective concern that women bringing these CervicalCheck related cases have shown again and again for each other, taking on challenges and even risk so that principles can be established and then relied upon by others just as Vicky Phelan, the late Ruth Morrissey, and the late Patricia Carrick did in each of their landmark cases.
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