At Cian O’Carroll Solicitors, our work is dedicated exclusively to medical negligence and catastrophic personal injury law.
As the largest medical negligence practice in Ireland. We believe that the quality of our advice and representation for clients is improved by our vast experience, allowing us to better anticipate both opportunities and threats. Above all, our experience helps us to help keep you safe as you pursue justice through the Courts.
Our first role is to listen; then to understand your experience and concerns. Next, we review your medical records carefully to identify the real issues at the heart of your query while never assuming there is a case.
By consulting with leading independent medical experts, and asking them the right questions we get the best informed answers that allow us to advise you clearly on whether the care you received fell below the standards you were entitled to expect.
If that case was deficient to the legal standard for negligence, and you wish to seek redress, we draw on our decades of expertise to represent you fearlessly. At every stage, we try to guide you with clarity and determination, aiming to secure a successful outcome for you in the shortest time possible.
Injuries to the Baby
Injuries to the Mother
Failures in care of the newborn
Delayed Diagnosis and Treatment
Medical negligence, or clinical negligence as it is perhaps more correctly called is a legal definition. People usually think of medical negligence as a mistake in medical care that causes a person harm but in law it is more nuanced than that. Medical negligence arises only when there has been a particular type of mistake called a ‘breach of duty’ that causes harm. This breach will only arise when, based on the expert medical evidence in a case, the mistake is one that no other doctor of similar general or specialist skill would be guilty of if exercising ordinary care.
That is a very high bar – one that protects the medical profession from the consequences of all but the most serious errors and failures.
Because of this, it is the medical profession and not lawyers who decide the applicable standard in any particular area of medical practice. If you can prove that the care has been so poor that no other doctor would have been guilty of it, then you must clearly identify the harm that has been caused solely by this failing – harm that would not have arisen anyway due to other factors.
Negligence therefore has three ingredients – there is the ‘error’ that we call a breach of duty, then there is the harm that you have suffered and finally (and often the most complex part) is the causal link that proves that the error caused that harm rather than some other cause. These complex issues were last considered by the Supreme Court of Ireland in the case of Morrissey & Anor v. HSE & Others where they represented the successful plaintiffs.
Medical negligence can arise in every aspect of healthcare. We have worked for clients with cases right across the spectrum of medical specialities and settings however over time, we have tried to focus on certain specific areas where we believe our experience and skills are strongest and we can offer something special to our clients. These are the areas specified on this site.
Obvious though it may seem, it should be said here that healthcare professionals have not set out to cause harm and when accidental harm does arise, it must be a sourse of great distress to those healthcare professionals attending on that patient even where they have not been in any way responsible for it. Nobody sets out to cause harm, but when harm occurs and it is serious, leading to long-term or even lifelong consequences, it can become a legal issue whereby redress and the provision of future care is essential to provide for that patient.
Some common examples that we see include:
