A class action lawsuit has finally been certified by a Newfoundland Supreme Court justice. The lawsuit is brought on by faulty tests involving hundred of breast cancer patients.
Justice Carl Thompson announced the decision Monday at court in St. John’s, giving lawyers the power to bring a suit involving 100 patients together as a group, thus a class-action, rather than litigating the matter separately against the Eastern Health regional authority.
Lawyer Ches Crosbie, who filed the application last year seeking unspecified damages, said he saw Thompson's decision as a victory. He said that there is a possibility of an out-of-court settlement before the matter is brought to court again.
Eastern Health didn’t like the decision stating that the cases were different enough in nature that they ought to be heard separately in courts. However, the Newfoundland and Labrador government ordered a judicial inquiry last week into how hormone receptor tests were flawed over an eight-year period. The tests are conducted in order to know what sort of treatment Eastern Health is giving to its breast cancer treatments.
Evidence shows that of 763 patients who had tested negative as candidates for anti-hormonal therapies, 317 were later found to have been given wrong results. This figure is stipulated in an affidavit filed with Crosbie’s application, and is signed by an Eastern Health manager. There is an error rate of 42 percent – several times higher than the 10 to 15 percent range that Eastern Health officials suggested in 2006.
Eastern Health officials have also apologized this month for withholding information about problems it had with its lab. However, the authority already sent samples for retesting to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and said that those problems have already been resolved.