Fiona Mills secures £6.3m personal injury award
Who? Fiona Mills, 40, clinical negligence and personal injury partner at Kent law firm Thomson Snell & Passmore.
Why is she in the news? Settled a clinical negligence claim for more than £6m against East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust on behalf of Ellie Matraves, six, who was seriously brain-damaged at birth. Mills also secured damages for the parents. The trust said: ‘Mistakes were made, for which the trust admitted liability.’
Thoughts on the case: ‘I have worked on many cases of infant brain damage but this was probably the worst example of entirely avoidable catastrophic damage I have seen. Despite NHS Litigation Authority opposition, I was able to recover damages for the child’s parents for the psychological damage they had suffered.’
Dealing with the media: ‘Although the headline settlement figure of £6.3m attracted interest, journalists understood there was more to this case than the high level of damages. We were able to underline that patient safety, and not spin about legal costs, should be the government’s priority.’
Why become a lawyer? ‘I wanted to help people by redressing injustices.’
Career high point: ‘Getting to the truth and recovering significant damages in a case where the young father of an infant daughter died after receiving an infected kidney during a transplant operation.’
Career low point: ‘As a 21-year-old articled clerk in Scotland (I’m now dual-qualified) I was about to conduct my first criminal trial when an older and wiser lawyer warned me not to enter the court with my handbag. The judge disapproved of female lawyers and would fly into a temper if he spotted a handbag in his court. Happily, times have moved on.’
