Gregg v Scott [2005] UKHL 2 – Law Journals

Causation: Statistics in medicine

Ian Meikle considers the approach to causation in the clinical negligence case of Schembri v Marshall [2020] ‘Statistics may be the main evidential aid to what would have happened in hypothetical situations, but they are still only trends.’ The Court of Appeal addressed the appropriate approach to causation in a medical negligence case where a …

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Insights by Penningtons Manches: A song of coal and ire

Nicole Finlayson and Clare Arthurs consider the de-throning of a judgment on loss of a chance ‘While the Court of Appeal may have had persuasive and forcefully expressed views regarding why it, faced with the same material, would have come to a different conclusion, that did not support a conclusion that the trial judge had …

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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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Case Report: Christine Reaney v University of North Staffordshire NHS Trust (1) and Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (2) [2014] EWHC 3016 (QB)

Negligent treatment of pre-existing paraplegia; establishing the appropriate counterfactual; whether credit should be given for care required in any event ‘One might say that the paradigmatic negligent act is to make that person worse. A court may well have sympathy with a vulnerable individual whose quality of life is reduced even further by those in …

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Clinical Negligence: Delayed diagnosis in cancer: proof of causation

Julian Matthews reports on a recent application of the alternative approach to causation suggested by Lord Phillips and Baroness Hale in Gregg v Scott Mr Justice Bean found that on the balance of probabilities the failure to diagnose the tumour in March 2006 had caused the claimant’s life expectancy to be reduced by three years. …

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Burden Of Proof: Loss of chance

Suzanne Farg and Verity Danziger discuss the hurdles to overcome to establish a claim The importance of factual and expert industry evidence cannot be underestimated and, in this case, the quality of the factual evidence was vital in allowing the claimant to bring his loss of earnings claim fully. The method by which the courts …

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Industrial disease: Divisible and indivisible injuries

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Tim Trotman reviews the tests for factual causation following Sienkiewicz v Greif (UK) Ltd ‘The tests can be encapsulated in familiar phrases: “but for”, “material contribution”, “material increase in risk” and “apportionment”, but discriminating factual cases and matching them to the correct legal test has become far more difficult in the recent past.’ This article …

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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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