Decision on lawsuit over faulty cancer tests expected Monday

A Newfoundland Supreme Court judge says he hopes to release a decision by Monday on whether a class action lawsuit over faulty tests involving breast cancer patients can proceed.

Justice Carl Thompson heard three days of arguments about whether an application to certify a lawsuit against the Eastern Health regional authority has merit.

Thompson said Friday that he aims to give a quick response to St. John's lawyer Ches Crosbie, whorepresents almost 100 patients who claimed they were harmed by flawed hormone receptor tests.

Crosbie said the cases of the women should be heard together.

Lawyers for Eastern Health, however, argued that that there are too many differences in the patients' cases for them to be tried as one group.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government on Tuesday ordered a judicial inquiry into how the lab at Eastern Health produced hundreds of inaccurate tests between 1997 and 2005.

In that period, Eastern Health contracted Mount Sinai Hospital to retest samples. An affidavit filed with the Newfoundland Supreme Court, in response to Crosbie's application, showed that the error rate for hormone receptor tests was 42 per cent, or several times more than the rate that Eastern Health predicted last year.

Meanwhile, although Eastern Health reopened its main medical lab three months ago, it is still not ready to analyze hormone receptor tests from the province's other health authorities.

The St. John's lab's responsibilities include coverage for the entire province.

Workload questions come to forefront

Liberal health critic Dwight Ball said revelations over the last two weeks including Eastern Health's announcement it had suspended a Burin Peninsula-based radiologist have left him without the confidence to say the authority can handle its own workload.

The lab was temporarily closed in 2005, while the retests were scheduled.

"You would expect that two years later, with an investment in new technology, that we would be able to have a centre of excellence up to speed right now, so that all women across the province are tested by Eastern Health," Ball said Friday.

Health Minister Ross Wiseman said Eastern Health is ramping up to that point, but he is not certain when it will happen. He is confident, though, in the changes that Eastern Health made before the lab reopened in February.