§ CASE LIBRARY

Real medical negligence cases,
every one linked to the judgment.

Published judgments of the courts of England and Wales, summarised in plain English: what went wrong, what the court decided, and the sum where the judgment states it. We include the claims that failed as well as the ones that succeeded, because they show what you have to prove.

Judgments

44

With the sum stated

13

Claimant succeeded

26

Claim failed

16

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Claimant succeeded£1.3M

Parsons v Isle of Wight NHS Trust

[2023] EWHC 3115 (KB)·2023·Liability decided at trial

Before bowel cancer surgery, anaesthetists made three failed epidural attempts while the patient was awake and then seven more after putting her under anaesthetic, one of which pierced her spinal cord. Ritchie J held the anaesthetist should have obtained her informed consent before the unconscious attempts and offered alternatives, and that this failure caused the injury.

Consent is not a one-off: when a procedure changes course (here, moving to unconscious epidural attempts), the patient must be told of the options and risks again. The full agreed £1.3m followed from that single consent failure.

Contains information licensed under the Open Justice - Licence v2.0. Judgments from Find Case Law, The National Archives. Summaries are ours; amounts only where printed in the judgment.

§ HOW TO READ THESE

Most claims never reach a judgment. They settle privately, and settlement sums are confidential. Judgments surface when liability is disputed, when damages are fought over, or when a court must approve a settlement for a child or someone who lacks capacity. That is why approvals and damages trials are where the public figures come from.

Amounts are only what the judgment prints. Where a case shows a lump sum plus periodical payments, the yearly payments continue for life and can be worth far more than the lump sum. Where no figure is shown, the court decided fault but the money was settled or assessed elsewhere.

Plain-English guides built on these cases →

This guide is general information about the law in England and Wales, not legal advice about your case. ClaimGavel is run by Costart Projects Ltd on behalf of Tomlin & Partners, a specialist medical negligence firm regulated by the SRA. The free assessment on this page is an AI overview to show you roughly where you stand; a solicitor confirms the position in a free, no-obligation conversation.