A mother’s bid to sue a hospital for giving her the wrong baby to bury failed after she could not prove the trauma and suffering she claimed to have endured as a result.
The woman was admitted to the maternity ward at Lehurutshe Hospital in Zeerust, North West, in September 2020, where she gave birth to a stillborn child.
The woman never saw the baby’s remains as expected in her culture, and her family proceeded to bury the baby in the woman’s mother’s bedroom.
However, hospital officials visited her two days later to inform her that they had given her the wrong baby to bury and that an exhumation had to be conducted days later.
The hospital gave her another baby to bury, but she was haunted by the lack of surety that the second one was indeed hers.
The woman launched a lawsuit against the hospital and the North West health department at the high court in Mahikeng, demanding R500,000 for general damages.
In her evidence, the woman claimed that hospital staff told her that her baby was stillborn and arranged for the remains to be put in a coffin, but she did not view the body. The family went home and buried the child as per the family’s tradition.
Three weeks later, the remains were exhumed and handed over to the rightful family, and the woman was given the body of her stillborn infant, which she buried in her mother’s bedroom.
The woman told the court that the incident had left her with ill health, including recurring headaches.
The court said that although both parties agreed that the wrong body was buried, the onus was on the woman to prove negligence on the part of the hospital, which led to a breach of the duty of care, which, she claimed, had resulted in her suffering mentally.
“Mere nervous shock or trauma is not sufficient,” Judge JT Maodi ruled. “The fact that the defendants were negligent, which resulted in a breach of duty of care, is not sufficient on its own to warrant success or compensation in matters of this nature. The plaintiff has to do more or go further and establish a detectable psychiatric injury.
The plaintiff cannot simply allege shock; it must be substantiated by expert psychiatric evidence.
— Judge JT Maodi
“The plaintiff cannot simply allege shock; it must be substantiated by expert psychiatric evidence,” Maodi said. “I do not know if the plaintiff has or is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, medically diagnosed migraines or anxiety. I do not know how often the headaches occur or the severity of the headaches, in the morning or when it is cold or otherwise.”
He said ruling in her favour would be unfair.
“Without expert evidence on detectable psychiatric injury, and given the issues I have raised above, I find that the plaintiff has not acquitted herself in the threshold required to succeed in her claim. To find in favour of a claimant or plaintiff who subjectively and without expert medical diagnosis will lead to chaos and open floodgates for undeserving matters,” the judge said, dismissing the woman’s claim with costs.
