Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE SUPREME Court has thrown out a negligence suit which was brought against Dr. Ian Rodriques and the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital, Westmoreland, to which he is attached.
Charm Jackson, the mother of eight-year-old Kimola Merritt who died in 1994, had filed the suit seeking damages.
Mrs. Justice Marva McIntosh heard evidence in the case over several months and last week ruled that the claim had not been proved.
Three doctors were called as expert witnesses in the suit and they gave evidence as to the treatment that should have been administered to the child when she was hospitalised.
Winston Spaulding, Q.C., who represented Dr. Rodriquez, and Government lawyers Patrick Foster and Katherine Francis, who represented the hospital and the Attorney-General, cross-examined the witnesses for the claimant Jackson at length.
The lawyers asked the judge to find that based on the evidence, the defendants had been negligent.
Jackson had brought the suit contending that the child was admitted to the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital in September 1986 when she was 11 months old. She claimed it was lack of proper treatment which caused the child's condition to deteriorate.
She said when the child became sick, she took her first to a clinic and then to a private doctor where she was treated for a week. The private doctor sent her with the child to the hospital and when she went there, Dr. Rodriques examined the child before she was admitted. The child died on July 6, 1994, three years after the suit had been filed in 1991.
The defendants denied they were negligent and said that when the child was admitted, the meningitis was already at an advanced stage.
Dr. Rodriquez said every reasonable test and medical treatment was administered to the child.
