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The UK Supreme Court has ruled that damages for children harmed by medical negligence should include the full working life they would likely have had — not just earnings up to their life expectancy — raising the stakes for maternity-related claims and NHS costs. The decision follows a birth brain injury case at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where the child now has severe cerebral palsy, severe visual impairment and epilepsy, and needs 24-hour care.
The Move
The Supreme Court, by a majority, said compensation for a negligently injured child should account for “lost years” earnings and pension across a full expected working life.
The case involves a girl born in 2015 whose abnormal fetal heart monitoring during labour was not acted on; she was born with signs of oxygen deprivation, required resuscitation, and scans confirmed severe hypoxic brain injury.
The Trust admitted failures. A 2023 High Court award set a lump sum of £6,866,615 plus £394,940/year (inflation-linked), including earnings loss only to age 29 (her life expectancy).
Additional damages for full working-life earnings/pension will be calculated later; the family’s lawyers say it’s >£800,000.
Why it Matters for Care
For clinicians, especially in maternity, the ruling increases the financial consequences of preventable intrapartum hypoxic injury — reinforcing the clinical imperative to act promptly on abnormal fetal monitoring and escalate appropriately.
More high-value claims may translate into greater organisational scrutiny of CTG interpretation, escalation pathways, documentation quality, and incident response processes.
Expect stronger pressure to reduce avoidable harm in childbirth: the NHS reports ~250 brain injury cases in childbirth annually.
Between the Lines
The NHS’s clinical negligence liabilities are ~£60bn, with about two-thirds tied to maternity injuries — so even modest per-case increases can have system-level budget effects.
The court’s logic: there was “no basis in law” to treat injured children differently from adolescents/adults who already could claim for “lost years.”
Politically, this feeds debate over whether the NHS should shift more cases away from court: Conservative MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Public Accounts Committee chair) urged mediation, faster explanations/apologies, and better learning to prevent repeat harm.
What to Watch
The follow-on court process setting the new damages figure — and whether it becomes a reference point for settlement negotiations.
Whether NHS trusts and NHS Resolution expand mediation/early resolution approaches to limit legal costs and time-to-closure for families.
Any downstream policy moves from Parliament and oversight bodies focused on maternity safety, complaints handling, and negligence cost containment.
Source: BBC Health
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