With reference to the item in Obiter about the lawyer who opened separate files to deal with injuries to different limbs of the same client (see [2005] Gazette, 17 February, 12), I regret to say that doctors beat lawyers to it. By this I refer to the wonderful wheeze of multiple charging.


Back in the 1970s, I represented a doctor accused of serious professional misconduct by the British Medical Association. He had put in claims for treating several members of the same family after seeing a small child, brought to him by the child's mother. The child had conjunctivitis, so he warned the mother to keep towels, flannels and all clothes worn by the affected child clean and separate from those of the rest of the family, and generally warned as to the contagious nature of the condition.


He then put in five separate claims for treatment of the child and the mother, along with the father and the other two children, whom he had never even met at that time (the family had just arrived in his area).


Counsel's mitigation was brilliant, but the client was nevertheless aggrieved to receive a rap over the knuckles and a warning as to his future conduct, but no financial penalty.


John Levy, London