A 26-year-old man whose entire stomach was removed by mistake is to receive €450,000 in damages.
The High Court has yet to decide who will pay the damages.
Alan O'Gorman from Ratoath in Co Meath is suing St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin and the doctors who carried out the operation in March 2002.
Mr O'Gorman was told he had a perforated ulcer and tissue samples were taken.
He claims his tissue samples were then mixed up with those of a 70-year-old man who had stomach cancer.
Surgeon Justin Geoghegan removed his stomach and a week later told him a mistake had been made.
The hospital has admitted there was a mix-up but it denies negligence and breach of duty.
The hospital claims the surgeon should have carried out a simple exploratory procedure called an endoscopy, which would have enabled him to look inside Mr O'Gorman's stomach and establish there was no cancer present.
After talks between the doctors and the hospital, damages were agreed but there has been no agreement on the issue of who was responsible.
The court has been told Mr O'Gorman became very angry and depressed about what happened to him and took an overdose of pills on a number of occasions.
He can now eat only small amounts of food very slowly.
He gets tired easily and may not be able to work full time in the future and has an increased risk of osteoporosis.
The case was expected to last two weeks but may now be much shorter.
