UK Bar
Practice Areas
Clinical & lawyer’s negligence. Catastrophic injury. Inquests. Medical Research & Product Liability. Insurance. Specialist in complex clinical & legal issues.
Career
Clinical negligence: Williams (Privy Council. Causation. Whether Bailey applies to indivisible and divisible injury. Whether need to prove doubling of risk if causation factors are sequential); Maytum (Causation. Obverse of Gregg v Scott. Delayed diagnosis breast cancer. 10-year survival always above 50%. Recurrence of metastatic disease. Poor prognosis); Thomas (Locked-in syndrome); Bint (Delayed diagnosis of anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. Stroke in young man. Later leg amputation. Effect of under-anticoagulation c.f. atherosclerosis); Smith (Wrongful birth. Disabled child. Whether damages payable post-18 years). Lawyers negligence: Carter (Under-settlement of EL claim. Minor injury ultimately causing leg amputation. Failure investigate medical causation); Whitehead (Underlying wrongful birth claim. Novel issues: duty of care to father; when events after notional trial can be taken into account). Personal Injury: Merrett (Brain damage. £14m claim. Young man with pre-existing tetraplegia. Issues: scope of Sklair ‘injury-on-injury damages’; non-delegable duty; vicarious liability for agency nurses); Scott (Head and leg injury to cyclist. No helmet. Contributory negligence. ‘Bizarre presentation’. Difficult management issues. Psychiatric conversion disorder. £4m). Neve (Motor claim. Brain damage and vulnerable personality. £6m); Lyons (Psychiatric injury. Material contribution causation c.f. Jobling v Associated Diaries. Causation and physical injury where second accident prolonged effects of first). Medical Research and Product liability: PIP breast implants; Trans-vaginal and abdominal mesh claims; Consent in: experimental laser therapy; laparoscopic surgery by inexperienced operator. Member of: Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (to 2009); Human Genetics Commission (to 2012); National Research Ethics Advisory Panel (to 2012). Expert witness to House of Lords Science & Technology Committee (cloning, employment and insurance in genetics). Insurance: Willsher (£2m permanent health insurance claim. Discontinued at trial after cross-examination exposed flaws in diagnosis of intractable depression).
Professional Memberships
PNBA (co-opted member of executive committee)
Publications
Medical Ethics and Genetics, in Powers and Harris, Clinical Negligence (2008).
