Case study: Sight loss through clinical negligence

Our client, Anna, received significant compensation from a hospital trust after a treating doctor failed to identify a condition that caused rapid and permanent loss of vision in one eye. Then, in a heart-breaking but unrelated twist, Anna went blind in her other eye. Personal injury lawyer Virginia Ralfe describes how City Lawyers helped Anna prove her claim and receive funds to help her live independently.

Anna’s story

Anna, a Polish citizen, was visiting her sister in England when she developed a red, itchy right eye and reduced vision. She visited a pharmacist and then phoned NHS Direct, who advised going immediately to A&E, which she did. It was New Year’s Eve and the emergency doctor at the local hospital sent her home with eye drops. 

By New Year’s Day, the pain was much worse and Anna, who was in her thirties at the time, experienced reduced vision. She returned to A&E and after a five hour wait, at around 3am was told she needed to see a specialist ophthalmologist. Anna was advised to make her way to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London – which she had no means of doing at that time of the morning – or to return later that day to see a specialist in the hospital’s eye department, which she did. 

By then Anna’s vision had deteriorated further.

It transpired that the hospital had failed to identify a corneal ulcer that needed urgent and specific treatment. The delay in treatment meant she suffered permanent and significant reduced vision in her right eye.

How we approached the case

Anna’s sister phoned City Lawyers in late 2014, almost two years after the incident. She and Anna, who’d returned to Poland, had gone through the hospital trust’s formal complaints procedure and had spoken to other local solicitors who weren’t willing to take on her case. Anna sent us all the communications she’d received from the hospital trust. It accepted that certain procedures weren’t followed but didn’t formally admit any liability.

On considering the evidence, I felt sure that Anna hadn’t received the appropriate treatment and there was a case for clinical negligence. This meant Anna needed to prove that her treating doctors had breached their duty of care – in other words, that they did something that no body of reasonable doctors would have done. Anna also had to prove that the outcome would have been different had the doctors followed procedure. 

We sourced Anna’s medical history, had it officially translated from Polish, and appointed experts including an ophthalmic surgeon and emergency doctor to provide expert opinion in the case. It’s important to note that the experts’ duty is always to the court, not to the claimant.

The complexities

Despite our evidence, the hospital trust didn’t initially concede that Anna’s injuries were as a result of the doctor’s negligence. Causation was a key issue and our evidence supported the fact that her injuries would have been far less significant if she’d received appropriate and timely treatment.

We’d been upfront with Anna and told her this could be a lengthy case but we could never have predicted that she would develop a condition in her left eye called toxoplasmosis. It was completely unrelated to the injury in her right eye but by spring 2016 she was completely blind in the left eye and could no longer work as an engineer. 

In a negligence claim the purpose of any damages recovered is, as far as is possible, to put you in the position you would have been in had the negligent act not happened and had you not suffered those injuries. In this case, if it wasn’t for the negligence, Anna would have had significantly better vision in her right eye, even if she had gone on to lose the vision in her left eye.

The outcome 

Anna’s claim became much more significant as she was no longer able to work and needed additional care and support.. 

As the hospital trust didn’t accept liability, we issued formal court proceedings setting out why we believed the hospital was negligent. Through the litigation process and following the exchange of expert evidence we were eventually able to settle Anna’s claim with the hospital trust.

Anna was awarded a significant sum of money to compensate her for her injuries and to help her live independently. With the benefit of her damages Anna was able to take steps to allow her to resume a more independent life. This included investing in suitable accommodation,purchasing technological devices to help her around the home and when out and about and also securing a wonderful assistance dog who is aptly named Hope.