Liability, awards and settlements

20.2, medical negligence, damages

UK: a teenager was awarded £6.6mn damages for a birth injury which left him severely brain-damaged. The boy had cerebral palsy and mental impairment after he was born at the city’s John Radcliffe Hospital in November, 1991. He will never walk but he has a near normal life expectancy. The wheelchair-bound boy would never be independent, would never enter the paid workforce and would need assistance 24 hours a day. He was starved of oxygen towards the end of his mother’s labour, but the signs were not heeded and his delivery delayed. By the time he was born by emergency caesarean section, he had already suffered brain damage. The claim was awarded against Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority.