The Eastern Cape Health Department will have to fork out millions of rands in damages to the mother of a child born with cerebral palsy after the Mthatha State Attorney’s office botched an appeal bid in a medical negligence case.
Daily Dispatch notes that the department had numerous opportunities to pursue its appeal against the Eastern Cape High Court (Mthatha) finding that it was liable for the damages in the case, involving Sipetu Hospital in Kwabhaca (Mount Frere) and the birth of a baby girl.
The child suffers from spastic non-ambulatory cerebral palsy and requires a lifetime of specialist medical and other support, found the court.
Similar cases have resulted in the department paying out anything from R10m to R20m in damages, sometimes more.
Inexplicably, the department’s lawyers, via the State Attorney’s office in Mthatha, had overshot, by more than a year, the opportunity to file their court papers on time after the SCA in October 2020 granted it special leave to appeal the ruling.
The SCA said the department could not explain its “gross non-compliance” and that the manner in which the State Attorney’s office in Mthatha had dealt with the matter was “to be strongly deprecated”.
The SCA rules require that any party pursuing an appeal must, within one month of the date of leave to appeal being granted, file a formal notice of appeal.
Within three months of that it has to lodge the record of proceedings before the High Court.
The department filed its notice of appeal to the SCA in January 2021. However, said SCA Judge Glenn Goosen, a proper record was finally lodged more than a year late in June 2022.
To reinstate a lapsed appeal, the department was required to seek condonation for its failure to comply with the SCA rules.
The explanation for the “flagrant and substantial non-compliance” was manifestly inadequate, he added, meaning the court should not even consider whether it had any chance of success.
He said the interest of the child was at issue.
The courts had yet to decide on the quantum of damages and the family had not yet received any compensation.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Cerebral palsy causality: A quick fix to reduce medical negligence payouts
Failed cerebral palsy appeal illustrates ‘risk of not giving evidence’
Lifetime cost of care in cerebral palsy medical negligence claims
SA targets cerebral palsy claims to staunch flood of negligence actions