We were recently made aware that some chiefs in the NHS believe that medical negligence victims should settle for an apology and nothing more. There was also a suggestion that many would.
It all comes down to cutting the legal costs that the NHS is facing; but denying a victim’s rights to fair and reflective justice is not the way forward for this. Many of these headlines burst from the press pages and they often paint the lawyers in the worst kind of light.
Here are some reasons as to why this theory of just saying sorry to a victim of medical negligence is fundamentally flawed.
- Lost your legs due to medical negligence?
- Perhaps you’ve lost all bowel and bladder controls due to a blunder?
- Maybe a mistake led to you being starved of oxygen and will require round-the-clock care for the rest of your life?
An apology alone is nowhere near good enough.
We find that the vast majority of medical negligence case we deal with are not minor cases. We often find that people have been left needing further operations due to errors, or have had their conditions complicated beyond repair as a result of inadequate treatment or slow diagnosis. Medical negligence is serious and the victims can be left with lifelong consequences.
An apology alone is not good enough.
To help you understand this, you need to know what people are claiming for. This isn’t just some joyous lump-sum to be squandered on lavish holidays and luxury possessions. You do receive a pay-out for the suffering and pain endured, but the real asset to claiming is the losses and expenses being covered.
Can you imagine being off work for nine months and struggling to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for your family because you can’t work as a result of a medical negligence?
Can you imagine having to deal with the years of fallout from ending up in debt as a result of such circumstances?
What about the constant costly trips to appointments and for treatment? What about friends and family taking time out of their lives to look after you?
Who’s paying for all that? Should the victim simply suffer in silence?
No – they should make a claim for medical negligence compensation, and damages for such suffering and loss is entirely fair and entirely justified.
What about the small cases?
Any case worth less than £1,000.00 isn’t going to be able to be taken on by most lawyers anyway because fees generally cannot be recovered. But, are we saying we should discriminate against what may be perceived as a small injury?
OK, so a victim breaks their arm and suffers for just six weeks, meaning six weeks off of work. What if they’re a self-employed bricklayer who will receive virtually nothing from being off work for six weeks? What if the family they’re supporting are already on the breadline and that six weeks of lost earnings alone could cripple them?
It’s all subjective, and we should not discriminate at all.
What about the lawyers’ fees?
Medical negligence claims are hard to prove and hard to fight, and the NHS have a history of trying to defend some cases even when they ought to just accept liability and pay out for genuine cases. At the end of the day, to ensure the victim receives fair representation, they need a lawyer.
We’re all for keeping costs down, but it takes two to tango – let’s not see cases defended for five years and then settled at the doors of court leading to huge legal fees, most of which will not end up with the lawyer; they’ll end up being paid to the court, medical experts and barristers.
Victims need a lawyer, and the NHS need to be pragmatic about this. At the same time, proper funding should reduce medical negligence cases as opposed to them being a symptom of a struggling system that the government may be failing to support.
Still, at the end of the day, we must never ever forget the victims. They are entitled to fair justice, and for many, an apology is not enough.
