Does medical negligence affect my claim
I had an off just over a year ago and managed to do myself a fairly nasty set of injuries to my left leg. Anyway the other side admitted liability early on and have been paying for treatment and have generally been fair up until recently. The issue is I was in for some treatment and the hospital botched up an operation and it looks like my recovery is now going to take longer as a result. The other side’s solicitors are saying they are not paying for the impact of the surgeon’s mistake and say any ongoing loss is not for them to compensate. Can you give me some tips to pass on to my solicitor as she seems a little confused about what to do?!
Edward Gibby, by e-mail
Answer
We quite often see cases where a person has an accident (road traffic or as in your case medical accident) during the course of a claim for a previous accident.
It is a quite straightforward situation where alleged medical negligence is the second incident. For medical negligence to count as an intervening act (preventing the person responsible for the first accident to pay for the consequences of a second event even if the treatment being received would not have been received but for the first accident) then it must be grossly negligent treatment, not merely negligent treatment. An example would be operating on the wrong limb as that is obviously grossly negligent. So the answer in your case will depend on medical expert evidence as to the treatment received being grossly negligent or not.
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