Bailey v Ministry of Defence [2008] EWCA Civ 883 – Law Journals

Childbirth Injury: Liability issues

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Rushmi Sethi examines clinical negligence claims concerning childbirth injury ‘The doctor’s obligation, other than in cases where it would damage the patient’s welfare, was to present the material risks and uncertainties of different treatments, and to allow patients to make decisions that would affect their health and well-being on proper information.’ Relatively few childbirth injury …

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Causation: Looking for answers

Paul Sankey examines the issues in Dr Sido John v Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust ‘The “material contribution” test only applies in cases where it is impossible to attribute particular damage to a specific cause and therefore apportionment cannot be appropriate.’The recent case of Dr Sido John v Central Manchester …

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Liability: A catalogue of errors

In part two of his article, Robert Weir QC continues his compilation of the most significant cases involving liability decisions from the last year ‘The judge properly recognised that the burden of proof lay with the claimant and did not draw inference of negligence from the fact that the extrusion had been retained.’ Part …

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Causation: The sum of the parts

Matthew White weighs up the ‘but for’ test and material contribution in cumulative cause cases ‘The “material contribution” approach applies just as much to multiple factor cases as to single agency cases.’ An article in this publication in 2013 (‘Breach of duty and causation, where are we now?’ by Christopher Sharp QC and Matthew White, …

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Material Contribution: Causes for concern

Julian Matthews highlights a case that demonstrates the courts’ approach to contribution to injury ‘Even where there were multiple causes, if the defendant’s breach of duty had materially contributed to one of those causes and that contribution was material to the development of the condition overall, then the principles of material contribution applied, and causation …

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Clinical Negligence: Delay of reckoning

The material contribution test for causation in clinical negligence has been maintained and clarified following Williams and John. Suzanne Farg reports ‘The defendant appealed to the Privy Council on the basis that the Court of Appeal had been “led into error by a misinterpretation of ‘material contribution’ as sufficient for the purposes of causation.”’The recent …

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Advocate’s Advice: Keeping it simple

Bill Braithwaite QC highlights a judgment with clear findings on causation and material contribution ‘A claim will fail if the most that can be said is that the claimant’s injury is likely to have been caused by one or more of a number of disparate factors, one of which was attributable to a wrongful act …

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Medical Negligence: The care that would have been needed in any event

Emma Zeb and Glyn Edwards consider the Court of Appeal decision in Reany v University Hospital of North Staffs NHS Trust [2015] and the impact this has on care and medical treatment claims ‘The question of whether or not the claimant would have paid for the care package received on a ‘but for’ basis is …

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Negligence: Material contribution to damage

One of the more intellectually challenging concepts in the field of clinical negligence is that of material contribution. Julian Matthews highlights two recent cases which illustrate some of the issues which arise ‘A defendant cannot be held to be liable for loss or damage that it did not cause or to which it made no …

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Evaluating Claims: Successive causes of injury: the causation conundrum

Julian Matthews assesses the difficult legal issues that arise when multiple causes give rise to a compound injury ‘In clinical negligence cases, the complexity of the factual matrix means that the fine line between recovery and no recovery is regularly tested.’ Most clinical negligence litigation arises out of adverse outcomes secondary to medical intervention required …

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