Medical negligence is where a healthcare professional caring for you administers the incorrect treatment, inadequate treatment or misdiagnoses and you suffer an injury, or your health worsens as a result. 

Doctors, nurses, dentists and all other healthcare professionals have a duty to look after you and treat you to an accepted medical standard. If the medical professionals taking care of you fail to provide the appropriate treatment and you suffer an injury as a result, you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.

1. As soon as you advise me of your wish to pursue a medical negligence claim, I will contact you to arrange a convenient time to discuss the matter with you so that I can obtain information about your case.
2. At the end of our discussion, I will consider the information provided and assess whether I believe you have prospects of success with your claim.  If I believe that there is sufficient merit to warrant further investigations, I will set up a file, send you the relevant engagement documents and start the investigative process.
3. I will request your medical records and on receipt, I will review the records and providing I believe merits remain unchanged, I will arrange for the records to be sorted and pagination.  I will also prepare a chronology of relevant medical entries.
4. I will then instruct an independent medical expert or experts to advise in respect of failures in care and the injury suffered as a consequence.
5. Providing the evidence received from the expert(s) is supportive, I will serve a Letter of Claim setting out the allegations of negligence and injury on the Defendant(s).
6. If Defendant(s) admits liability, I will explore quantum with you to include recovery for pain, suffering and loss amenity and any out-of-pocket expenses such as loss of earnings, care, travel, costs of future treatment etc.
7. Once we’ve finalised, I will enter into negotiations with the Defendant(s) with a view of settlement without the need of going through the court process.
8. If the Defendant(s) denies liability, we will proceed through the court process which often ends in the settlement of the claim without going to Trial.

The law provides that any claim for Medical Negligence must be commenced at Court within three years of the date of the negligence, however there are some exceptions to this rule.

• Knowledge – where someone has received negligent treatment, but was unaware of it at the time, the three year period will not commence until the date on which they had reason to suspect that they received negligent treatment. This will often be the case in delay in diagnosis claims, where a patient is initially reassured by their Doctor, only to find out later that the diagnosis was incorrect.
• Children – children under the age of 18 years are not able to bring a claim on their own behalf. Whilst the claim can be brought for them by a Litigation Friend before this time, the three year time limit will not start until their 18th birthday. This means that a child who is the victim of Medical Negligence will have until their 21st birthday to bring a claim.
• Capacity – where an adult lacks sufficient mental capacity, they may be considered to be unable to bring a claim in their own right. In these circumstances, the three year time limit will not apply. Should the person later regain mental capacity, then the three year period will commence, and they will have three years from the date they regained capacity to bring a claim. Mental capacity is complex and requires confirmation from a Doctor.
• Death – where a person who has received negligent treatment dies within the three year period, the time will reset, and the Representative of their Estate will have three years from the date of their death within which the claim must be brought.

In order to ensure that all cases have an end point, to stop them rolling on for years unnecessarily, at a certain stage in investigations the Court will list a Trial date. This will often be several months in advance, in order to allow continued investigations and negotiations.

In most cases, settlement will be agreed before the Trial takes place and it will not go ahead. It is therefore highly unlikely that you will need to attend a Trial if you bring a Medical Negligence claim, however it cannot be guaranteed and will be depending upon other factors such as how the Defendant responds to the claim.