The Blackrock Clinic in Dublin. Photo: Graham Hughes/Photocall Ireland
Between Blackrock and a hard place: the epic battle for control of Ireland's premier private hospital
One of Ireland's most bitter corporate battles has shed a light on the financial affairs of secretive tycoons. But after already spawning more than a dozen judgments, what is the battle for Blackrock Clinic actually about?
21st Nov, 2019 - 20 min read
Francesca Comyn
Legal Editor
It is hard to identify the first shot fired in one of the most interminable and bitter corporate battles of the past decade but it could have happened in May 2013 when US-based surgeon Joseph Sheehan wrote to one of Ireland's richest men, Larry Goodman, asking whether there had been a change in ownership of the billionaire's shareholding in the exclusive Blackrock Clinic. This seemingly innocuous inquiry from Sheehan, a co-founder in 1986 of Ireland's self-proclaimed "best private hospital" along with three other surgeons, including his brother the retired orthopaedic surgeon Jimmy Sheehan, did not precipitate the seemingly never-ending onslaught…