Negligence

To have negligence admitted 3 facts must be established:

  1. Duty of care
  2. Breach of that duty/breach of care
  3. Causality

Duty of Care – Put simply, the person delivering the care must provide a reasonable level of care.  Trust automatically owes the child a duty of care. 

Breech of care – The standard of care fell below that which a reasonable practitioner would have given and the failure to give that standard of care resulted in harm

Causality – damage that is caused by the breach, and which is foreseeable.

All three parts of the ‘chain of causation’ must be present and proven for a successful case. In our experience, there can be appalling cases of breach of care yet no causality is proven.

Often after a letter of claim has been sent in by a legal team, The NHS Trust will accept or make admissions in two parts. Breech of care initially and then causality. These can be many months if not years apart.

Sometimes a Trust will only accept partial causality – the best care would still have had some of the same outcome – and agree on a percentage settlement with the family. ie they agreed their breech of care caused some but not all of the damage.


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