AIBU to consider legal action after admitted hospital negligence?

I was in a similar situation, but it was about my own health. I found asking AI, just through typing questions to google, very helpful. You can ask as many questions as you want, and it can give you different scenarios. It said I have a case, the negligence has resulted in a change to the rest of my life. I still haven’t decided whether I have the capacity to go through with a complaint, I have been treated very well recently….

www.avma.org.uk

Op please speak to the charity AVMA who specialise in helping people who are dealing with situations that may amount to medical negligence. They are an excellent organisation and can signpost to lawyers if appropriate.

Medical negligence solicitor here.

Firstly, there’s a big difference between the Trust admitting failings in care following an investigation and them admitting breach of duty and causation, both of which you have to prove to win a negligence claim.

The statutory bereavement award of £15,120 is only available to certain family members. Unless the deceased was your spouse, partner or child under 18, I doubt you’d be eligible to claim.

Equally, you could claim loss of financial dependency but only if the deceased was maintaining you financially.

The value of the claim will very much depend on the age and occupation of the deceased, and what family members have survived them. I appreciate that your motivation for bringing a claim would be to seek to effect change within the NHS.

It would be sensible to pick up the phone and call a specialist medical negligence firm for an initial free chat. They can advise you whether the claim is worth pursuing and whether you have the legal standing to bring a claim on behalf of the deceased and their estate.

I presume the death was referred to the coroner? what was the result of the inquest? If the hospital negligence contributed to the death, it will say that in the inquest outcome.

I think it depends what kind of outcome you would want.

DH and I disagreed about taking legal action after an arrogant Dr did something with our DD that absolutely worsened her condition and that we had absolutely made clear we were against.

DH didn’t want to damage our ongoing relationship with the hospital, but I was resolute I didn’t want to let it go.

We discussed it at length and ultimately decided that I wanted to pursue more than DH didn’t.

You have to balance out the benefit, in terms of feeling like appropriate action have been taken and things have changed, and protecting yourself and your relationships.

I would be upset but not sure. I don't suppose the doctors or nurses made the mistake deliberately. I'd ask for a written apology.

I wouldn't put myself and my family through this. It's bound to get into the local press. I'm assuming your relative was seriously ill and likely to have died soon regardless?

I wouldn't fall out with family over something like this if I could avoid it.

If it was a case of the deceased having dependents whose quality of life was negatively impacted - e.g a parent with no significant life cover and those young children won't habe the same income if the parent survived is vastly different to a csse where there are no dependents/financial loss etc.

Surely the answer is take legal advice & then make an informed decision rather than ask a load of strangers? Irwin Mitchell are a good firm for this sort of work

You can donate the money to charity in their name

As a pp said you'd be better to push for an inquest. A medical negligence claim can take years, will be very stressful and could destroy your family if you aren't all in agreement in the first place. I hope you get some closure and a change to grieve peacefully.

If they have admitted negligence then it's unlikely that you would need to go to court, unless the person affected was a child.

When I was 10, my GP admitted negligence and my parents were advised to appoint a solicitor on my behalf and they would cover the costs - if you do appoint one then make sure they have agreed to cover costs of yours.

I think its important to think about why legal action is being taken/what difference it would make? My parents were advised to pursue this as I would likely need surgery when fully grown and the payout could cover cost of this being done privately at my convenience rather than being stuck on wait lists.

If your aim is to ensure no repeat, I would be looking at a formal complaint, eith evidence of anyone culpable being reported to their professional body for investigation - the Dr in my case self reported to the GMC and had his scope of practice restricted.

I’m sorry you find yourself in this position, OP. When I needed to make a similar decision I was advised to have a look at the Law Society’s list of accredited clinical negligence solicitors which you can find if you scroll down a bit here https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/career-advice/individual-accreditations/clinical-negligence-accreditation/.

All the best.

I suppose the question is: what outcome do you want?

People usually want things to change. Is that what you want?

If policies were not followed, have they said why, and what action will be taken to rectify that? Was it an individual's fault or something systematic?

Regarding suing, IMO the list of legal cases is just another report that senior managers have to read. There's usually one or two people dealing with the legal cases and they are quite siloed. The complaints process tends to be more robust in terms of what senior management see and what changes are made.

I would consider suing OP if you have already had an admission of liability (ie negligence AND causation). The trust may admit negligence but say the negligence did not cause or contribute to the death. This is very common. You would then have to prove causation which would require experts on your side etc.
Difficult to say without seeing the correspondence from the hospital.
I don’t see that there is a moral reason not to, quite the opposite

Because the trust who caused the death have to be investigated. Those who contributed to the death will know. There will be questions to be answered. This is why I am suing the NHS trust that caused the death of my Father.

It's standard to advise people at the end of a formal complaint about potential next steps for redress. So you won't have been 'advised to sue' - these will be standard paragraphs.

I assume that the formal complaints process has completed? Are you happy that lessons have been learned, changes made, and the events will not happen again to another patient?

If not, what else do you want the Trust to do?

My late husband died in hospital, and I complained about their neglect and negligence.

After months, I got an admission.

Everyone must do their own thing, but I chose not to sue. I’d got the acknowledgement of their lack of care and inappropriate treatment, , and I was too distraught to want a legal case.

I couldn’t have cared less about how suing might affect the NHS. I just couldn’t cope with any more trauma.

I would only sue the NHS if I had increased costs because of their negligence (eg birth injuries that mean additional physio, housing, mobility costs for a child), or if I was intent on giving the money back into healthcare (most likely an NHS charity).

Nobody wins when you sue the NHS, as if you do it to make sure it never happens again, there is then less money to make sure that happens as the money is in your bank account.

But I wouldn’t judge anyone for making a different decision.

My MIL died due to hospital negligence. We did not sue the hospital, but did insist on an inquest to know what happened, and requested to know what procedures they were putting in place to make sure it didn't happen to anyone else. And more importantly an apology.

The NHS pays out more in maternity negligence cases than it spends on maternity care. A sorry state of affairs.

The nhs does not change because people ask it to. It’s a rambling mess of administrative bureaucracy and incompetence driving under supported medical care teams.

sueing is only way anyone in nhs upper management takes any action

From the sounds of it, mistakes have been admitted but categorically not negligence