Our Story
We believe in putting the client first, fighting for justice for the vulnerable.
We are at a time of extremely challenging developments regarding True Access to Justice that is affordable to the average person. This is combined with a scarcity of judges and judicial resources to hear cases, attempts by large organisations to weaken or decrease peoples’ right of legal redress, access to the courts and ever more complex legislation and legal regulation.
At Michael Boylan Litigation Law Firm, we believe in standing up to these injustices to ensure that people who have been harmed by negligence and malpractice are granted their right to legal redress. We identify the need to be innovative, to learn, evolve and have an ever more refined level of specialism and expertise to provide as much assistance as possible to those who have suffered life-altering injuries. That’s why Gillian and Michael came together to build a specialist litigation law firm which confines its practice solely to specialist medical negligence and other professional and complex negligence litigation.
Our Background
Over the years there have been many landmark cases won, wrongs righted and successful battles fought for victims of medical accidents. We have never been afraid to challenge the norm. For example, one of our founding partners, Gillian O’Connor, is currently acting for scores of Narcolepsy victims arising from the Pandemrix swine flu Vaccine scandal, suing the state and big pharma.
Gillian’s career began in 1982. During the first part of her career she specialised in Defence litigation, running her own practice for more than 10 years, specialising in defending Health Boards and hospitals in respect of medical negligence claims. This gave her a unique insight into the defence litigation mindset. Then she joined Michael as his partner dealing solely with complex medical negligence actions acting for injured patients, many of whom were and are badly injured children.
In 1986, it all started for our other Founding Partner, Michael Boylan, when he took a job as an assistant solicitor in a small firm and commenced working on a birth injury case that was considered a lost cause and next to impossible to win. Sensing that a great wrong and injustice had been done to the Cerebal Palsy child and his distraught parents, Michael decided to take on the challenge, revived the investigation and pursued the case to Trial.
Little did he realise at the time, that the case in question (William Dunne v The National Maternity Hospital), was destined to become one of the most famous landmark cases in Irish Legal History. By 1990, the case would eventually establish the Legal Principles applicable to all medical negligence actions. These principles are still today applied by the Irish Courts on a daily basis.
The case of Dunne V NMH was the first successful case brought against an Irish maternity hospital and a consultant obstetrician for hypoxic brain damage caused to an infant at birth as a result of a mismanaged Labour.
For the very first time, in 1990, an award of over IR£1m was ever made and it was the last personal injury case tried before a Jury in Ireland. The meritorious case was a triumph for the little person, who was brave enough to take on The Irish State and the powerful medical establishment. In short, the case set the standard for many others to follow in the decades thereafter.
Michael and Gillian have always sought to ask the hard questions and challenge the status quo. They are widely recognised by both colleagues and peers as amongst Irelands foremost medical negligence practitioners.
The firm's core belief is that "Access to Justice" is a fundamental right and not a privilege.
Determined to at least match and exceed the unlimited resources available to the HSE, doctors and state hospitals, both Michael and Gillian knew that further improvement and specialism was required. They recognised the need to be innovative, to learn, evolve and have an ever more refined specialism and expertise.
They decided to establish this specialist litigation law firm with a dedicated team which would confine its practice solely to specialist medical negligence and other professional and complex negligence litigation.
