About medical cases

It is a grim statistic that possibly as many as 30,000 people die each year and many more are injured, all as a result of mistakes by doctors and medical staff.

The law treats medical claims a little differently from normal compensation claims for injury. When medical accidents happen it is almost always in the context of an intervention or proposed intervention to cure a patient. This contrasts with, say, a road accident where the encounter between the victim and the negligent driver was entirely unintended.

Doctors have for many years been given special consideration by the Courts. It is acknowledged that not every treatment will succeed and not everything that goes wrong will amount to negligence.

But sometimes things do go seriously wrong in medical treatment leaving a patient with grave or permanent injury.

When I deal with medical claims I try to deal sensitively with the situation respecting the skill of doctors (who will often be extremely distressed themselves if something goes wrong with medical treatment) but acknowledging that claims sometimes must be brought.

If a doctor or hospital are to be found liable for injuries caused to a patient it must be shown that that the treatment was substandard. This means that if a doctor makes a judgment about the treatment of a patient which is open to criticism but that there is a respectable body of doctors who would have made the same decision then the doctor may not be liable for the consequences of anything that goes wrong.

We also have to show that injury was caused as a result of a negligent treatment (or failure to treat). If there was negligence but it had nothing to do with your injury then compensation will not be paid. For more information on medical cases see our fact sheet. If you would like me to send you a copy please telephone or email me. Alternatively you can download it here by clicking on the button.