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After five years of legal battle, the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has dismissed a ₦250 million medical negligence suit filed against Garki Hospital Abuja and one of its staff pharmacists, Ruth Emeje.
The judgment by Justice M. A. Hassan has ended a legal battle that ran for more than five years.
Giving his verdicts, the judge held: “the claimant failed to substantiate his allegations.”
The claimant, Mohammed Oluwole Lawal, had sued over his treatment at the hospital on January 5, 2018, where he was attended to and stabilised for acute severe asthma.
The dispute centred on a prescription issued through the hospital’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, under which the attending physician prescribed 60mg of Prednisolone dispensed as twelve 5mg tablets.
Lawal alleged that Emeje unilaterally altered the dosage and that the medication caused him severe health complications and demanded ₦250 million in damages.
But while delivering his judgment in Suit No: CV/1357/18, Justice Hassan found that Emeje dispensed the medication exactly as electronically prescribed by the doctor, and that the claimant’s allegation of a “unilateral change” arose from a misinterpretation of automated clinical queues in the EMR system.
On the dose itself, the court accepted evidence — including from medical experts and the British National Formulary (BNF) — that a single adult dose of 40–60mg of Prednisolone is standard practice in the management of acute severe asthma.
The court further held that the claimant suffered no irreversible injury from the treatment.
Expert testimony established that the brief heart palpitations he experienced were a known, non-life-threatening side effect of the salbutamol nebuliser administered to clear his airways.
It also noted that the claimant produced no medical report, expert witness, or diagnosis from any doctor, in Nigeria or abroad, to support his claim of long-term injury.
Describing the case as built on speculation, conjecture and unsubstantiated assumptions, the court dismissed the suit as unmeritorious, characterising it — according to a statement by the defence — as an attempt to extort a healthcare institution that had saved the patient’s life.
After the judgment was handed down, the lead defence counsel, Nekabari Annah of Annah Nekabari & Associates, while reacting, commended the court for upholding the diligence of medical professionals.
“This victory is not just for Garki Hospital or Pharmacist Ruth Emeje; it is a victory for clinical accountability and technological innovation in Nigerian healthcare,” Annah said.
“Despite five years of expensive, vexatious litigation, Dr. Wada never wavered in his commitment to the PPP framework.”
Annah also praised the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ibrahim Wada, whose private operator runs the facility under a Public-Private Partnership with the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), crediting him with maintaining the paperless, EMR-based systems at the heart of the hospital’s defence.
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