€4.35m awarded to boy after HSE admits negligence at birth

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD boy who is permanently brain-damaged, blind and quadriplegic as a result of admitted negligence in the circumstances of his birth at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda, has secured €4.35 million in settlement of his High Court action.

Mr Justice Vivian Lavan was told Aaron Trimble would have been born a perfectly healthy baby were it not for the negligence at his birth, including failure to adequately monitor the foetal heart rate, which would have shown that he was in distress and needed to be delivered immediately.

There was also an apparent failure of hospital staff to notice that the machine recording the heart rate had run out of paper close to the time of delivery and, when Aaron was born and required resuscitation, an oxygen cylinder was found to be empty and resuscitation was delayed.

The “great tragedy” was that it seemed clear Aaron was a healthy and well baby up to late labour and, if proper actions had been taken and he was delivered sooner, he would have been born healthy, Denis McCullough SC, for the boy, said. “The only good fortune Aaron has had in his unhappy life is that he was born to such committed parents.”

As a result of the negligence, Aaron has cerebral palsy, cannot speak, will never walk or smile, is totally dependent and has a much shortened life expectancy.

At the request of counsel for Aaron, the judge approved a settlement of €4.35 million of his action against the HSE, which had admitted liability in the case. The settlement is the largest of its kind based on a life expectancy of an additional 16 years.

Aaron had brought the case through his mother Catherine (36), Dunbin, Knockbridge, Dundalk, Co Louth, who has been caring for Aaron since his birth on March 26th, 2004.

The hearing opened last Friday as an assessment of damages only, liability having been admitted by the HSE.

Mr Justice Lavan expressed his sympathy to Aaron’s parents over the “terrible tragedy” that had befallen their son, who should have been born “safe and sound”.