A promising young rugby player has been awarded more than R10.1 million in damages.
In terms of a settlement reached in the High Court in Pretoria yesterday, Judge Hans Fabricius ordered the defence minister to compensate Michiel de Goede, 29, of Pretoria for the damages he suffered because of a military orthopaedic surgeon’s failure to perform a knee operation correctly, ending his rugby career and leaving him with a limp and in permanent pain.
De Goede was a matric pupil at the Höerskool Eldoraigne in Centurion when he suffered a ruptured tendon in his knee during a school rugby match in April 2007.
At that stage he had already been offered a contract to play rugby for the Sharks and would have started his professional career the next year.
The first doctor who saw him at 1 Military Hospital misdiagnosed him with a sprained knee and sent him home with a bandage. He was only operated on eight days later after another doctor identified a possible ruptured tendon.
The military orthopaedic surgeon who operated on him came directly from her graduation ceremony to the hospital and met him for the first time while he was being pushed into the operating theatre without first seeing any X-rays or a sonar of his knee.
She didn’t see him again before his discharge because she didn’t work over weekends – and six weeks later referred him to the hospital’s physiotherapist, who became concerned as De Goede was still in pain Another surgeon at the military hospital again operated on De Goede in October that year to remove a wire from his knee.
When De Goede reported to the Sharks early in 2008, the team’s biokineticist immediately realised he was in no condition to play rugby because his patella was not in the correct position. De Goede was eventually referred to a surgeon specialising in knee operations and underwent further operations to his knee, but he had already developed progressive osteoarthritis and the damage could not be repaired.
The minister appealed against the court’s ruling of negligence, but the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2015 dismissed the appeal.
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