Ruth Morrissey’s long legal fight made necessary by broken promise

"I am not frightened to die, but I don't want to," CervicalCheck campaigner Ruth Morrissey told the High Court two years ago during the second day of her case.

The Co Limerick woman explained that receiving news of her prognosis, which had given her one to two years to live, was devastating, and nearly two years to the day after she addressed the court, her family announced that her battle with cancer was over as the 39-year-old died in a hospice.

Ms Morrissey and her husband, Paul, were awarded €2.1 million in damages by the High Court last May over the misreading of her cervical smear tests.

“You have to dig really deep,” she told the court at the start of the case. “You are not going to be the same person. I am not frightened to die, but I don’t want to.”

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She took her action against the HSE and two laboratories involved in processing CervicalCheck smears, Quest Diagnostics and Medlab Pathology.

The action was described as a test case for many similar actions over the CervicalCheck controversy, Ms Morrissey’s counsel claimed there was a failure to read and diagnose smear samples taken in 2009 and 2012. The failings led to Ms Morrissey’s cancer spreading untreated until she was diagnosed in June 2014.

After she was diagnosed, an internal audit took place of her past smears in 2014 and 2015, with the results sent to her gynaecologist in 2016. However, like many of the women affected by the scandal, she was not told that the reviews that had found the initial smears had been reported incorrectly until May 2018.

In a High Court judgment last year, Mr Justice Kevin Cross said Ms Morrissey’s life had been ruined and she had suffered a life sentence as a result of the failings.

Finding against Quest Diagnostics, Mr Justice Cross said a reasonably competent screener at the relevant time should not have failed to see what was on Ms Morrissey’s 2009 slide. In relation to the 2012 smear test, Mr Justice Cross found MedLab was negligent in failing to reject a smear taken in 2012 for having an inadequate number of cells.

He said the failure of MedLab to spot irregularities in the 2012 sample did not constitute negligence, because of the nature of the irregularities. The HSE had admitted liability in relation to the non-disclosure of the audit results.

‘Absolute confidence’

The High Court ruling set a threshold for screening programmes to have “absolute confidence” in their decision if they are giving a sample the all-clear.

The HSE and the two labs have since appealed aspects of the judgment to the Supreme Court, which heard last Thursday, three days before Ms Morrissey's death, that the €2.1 million in damages had been paid in full to her and her husband.

The CervicalCheck scandal first came to light after a court case taken by Vicky Phelan, which exposed shortcomings in the screening system that affected more than 220 women.

Ms Morrissey's lengthy legal battle stood in stark contrast to initial promises by then taoiseach Leo Varadkar when the scandal emerged that the affected women would not have to go through the court system for compensation.

Mr Varadkar last October apologised “for the humiliation, the disrespect and deceit” shown to the women and families affected by CervicalCheck controversy. He said there had been a “litany of failures” in how cervical screening in Ireland operated over many years.

Speaking outside the High Court after winning her case, Ms Morrissey was critical of the broken promise, but hoped the “women who are left” would not have to go through the court process and “fight for their right to have a good life in what they have left”.

In a statement on Sunday, her husband Paul said she had died at Milford Hospice. He said the State had not apologised to Ruth for the “magnitude of harm” caused by the misreading of her smear test.

“Now it is too late,” he added.