Medical Experts In Medical Negligence Claims

The success of a medical negligence claim is reliant on supportive evidence from medical experts.

Who is a medical expert?

A medical expert is a medical professional who has undertaken specific training in order to produce Court complaint reports and statements.

The exact expert required depends on the facts of the case at hand.

Although the expert is instructed by the solicitor, their duty is owed to the Court. This means they are required to provide their opinion from an impartial and objective viewpoint, they must sign a statement of truth at the end of their report confirming that they have complied with their duties.

The role of medical experts – why are experts so important to a clinical negligence claim?

Touching on the requirements for a successful claim – it must be shown there was both a breach of the duty of care and that any identified breach on the balance of probabilities, caused an injury or loss to the claimant.

In order to prove this, the Court will require independent medical expert opinion.

It is the expert’s role to give their opinion as to whether they believe any breaches of duty have occurred and also whether any breaches lead to an injury or loss. They will consider this based on their professional experience and in light of guidelines and standard reasonable practice in place at the relevant time. These are often referred to as liability and causation reports.

If the expert is unsupportive of either element, it may be that the claim is discontinued at that time.

In areas where there might be limited to no guidelines, there can be differing opinions between the claimant’s and defendant’s experts. These situations highlight the importance of having a robust expert who has reached their conclusions in a logical manner with appropriate evidence.

The expert’s evidence will be relied on throughout the claim and further questions may need to be put to them at various stages. Should the case proceed to Trial, the expert will most likely be required to give evidence.

If a claim reaches the stage of considering the future for the claimant, it is likely an expert will provide a report on the claimant’s current condition and prognosis in order to ensure any likely future issues or losses are accounted for in the claim.

When considering whether we are able to assist with your claim, we will discuss funding for your legal costs with you and find the most suitable option for you.

How do we decide which expert to use?

As a specialist medical negligence team with many years of experience, we have built a substantial database of known and trusted medical experts with whom we regularly work.

If we decide they are not appropriate we will then approach several other potential experts before determining who is best placed to assist in the case.

We always undertake searches for experts who are completely independent of the case, e.g. have no contact with or experience of the NHS Trust or individual doctors, nurses, dentists, etc. allegedly at fault.

Who pays the expert’s fees?

If the claim is successful, the other side will pay the expert’s fees.

If the claim is unsuccessful, how the expert’s fees will be settled depends on how the claim is being funded.

For example, if the claim is being funded by way of a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) with an After the Event (ATE) Insurance policy, the ATE policy will cover the expert fees.

Or, if the claim is being funded by Legal Expenses Insurance (LEI), the insurance will cover the expert fees.