A Dutch appeals court on Thursday acquitted a neurologist on charges of deliberately giving inaccurate diagnoses to patients, but did find him guilty of fraud and stealing prescriptions.

Ernst Jansen Steur was originally sentenced to three years in prison in what the public prosecution department said was the biggest medical negligence case ever heard in the Netherlands.

Both he and the public prosecution department had appealed against the earlier sentence. The department said he should be jailed for six years.

Jansen Steur, who was addicted to prescription drugs, diagnosed serious illnesses such as Alzheimer on the basis of very flimsy evidence, the court was told. Seven patients without psychiatric complaints went on to develop serious anxiety issues and relationship problems after being wrongly diagnosed and one patient committed suicide.

‘The judgment confirms that my client didn’t act deliberately but as a doctor with good intentions who indeed committed mistakes, some of which were very big,’ his lawyer Peter Plasman told news agency AP.

‘That was the main point of the case, but he didn’t act deliberately. And that’s why the court made the decision this was not a criminal act.’