A Supreme Court ruling is likely to lead to significantly higher damages being awarded to children injured by medical negligence.
Until now, children have only been entitled to compensation for lost earnings – pay missed out on by not being able to work – for the years they are expected to live.
But the court, ruling on the case of a child who sustained a brain injury at birth in 2015, found that compensation should take into account the full working life she would have had if she had not been harmed at birth.
The decision could have significant cost implications for the NHS.
The child at the centre of this case, born in 2015 at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is not being named.
During labour, monitoring indicated that her heartbeat was abnormal, but this was not acted on.
She was born with signs of oxygen deprivation, required resuscitation and later scans confirmed a severe hypoxic brain injury.
The Trust admitted failures in her care.
The girl has severe cerebral palsy, is unable to walk or talk, has severe visual impairment and epilepsy, and requires continuous 24-hour care.
In 2023, the High Court awarded a lump sum of £6,866,615 and an additional payment of £394,940 per year, linked to inflation.
This was to cover the cost of her care needs and for loss of earnings up to the age of 29, her life expectancy.
Today’s Supreme Court verdict, by a majority, has ruled that compensation should take into account her entire loss of earnings and pension for a full working life.
It said that the Trust and the family’s lawyers were agreed that had the girl not been injured, she would have enjoyed a normal life expectancy, obtained GCSEs, worked until aged 68 and received a pension.
The additional damages will now be decided on at a later date – lawyers for the family claim it amounts to more than £800,000.
The ruling brings the law in cases involving children into line with adolescents and adults that have suffered life-shortening injuries, who were already able to claim for ‘lost years’.
The court found there was « no basis in law » for injured children to have their claims treated differently.
