Tort

Personal injuries - dependent of British serviceman stationed in Germany - injury suffered through negligence of German doctor - proceedings to be brought in Germany

A v Ministry of Defence and another: QBD (Mr Justice Bell): 16 April 2003

A's father joined the British army and served in Germany between January 1995 and September 2000.

His wife became pregnant with A in late 1997 and was told by a British midwife that she would go to a German hospital for ante-natal scans and to have her baby.

A was born in June 1998 and suffered serious and permanent brain damage in the course of delivery.

It was not in dispute that the German obstetrician was negligent.

A, by its mother and litigation friend, B, sought declarations, including one that English law applied.

Geoffrey Tattersall QC and Hugh Mercer (instructed by Teacher Stern Selby) for the claimant; David Lloyd Jones QC and Adrian Hopkins (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Ministry of Defence; Brian Langstaff QC and Beverly-Ann Rogers (instructed by Bird & Bird) for Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust.

Held, refusing to grant the declarations, that there was a duty imposed on the Ministry of Defence to provide access to an appropriate regime of secondary healthcare in Germany, and it discharged that duty by contracting with the NHS Trust to procure designated German providers and to manage their contracts; that it was fair, just and reasonable that the NHS Trust should be under a duty to British patients, to exercise reasonable care in procuring the services of designated German providers and managing it contracts with them, but no more than that and there was basis for a duty or obligation on the NHS Trust to ensure that reasonable care and skill was used in secondary hospital treatment; and that, accordingly, proceedings by a British serviceman or woman, posted to Germany, or a dependent living there who suffered injury as a result of the negligence of a German doctor, nurse of midwife in a designated German provider hospital to which he or she had gone in accordance with the arrangements of the Ministry of Defence for secondary hospital healthcare, had to be brought in Germany.

Limitation - claimant bringing claim relating to undiagnosed dyslexia - constructive knowledge - court entitled to take account of fact that claimant unlikely to seek diagnosis because of low self-esteem

Adams v Bracknell Forest Borough Council; CA (Lords Justice Peter Gibson, Tuckey and Keene); 6 May 2003

The claimant, aged 30, brought a claim for personal injury arising from an alleged failure by the defendant council to diagnose his dyslexia while at school (between 1977 and 1988) and put measures into place to manage that disability to enhance his educational prospects.

The judge refused to strike out the defendant's limitation defence.

The defendant appealed.

Geoffrey Mercer QC and Michael Melville-Shreeve (instructed by Woolcombe Beer Watts, Newton Abbot) for the claimants; Edward Faulks QC and Andrew Warnock (instructed by Weightman Vizards) for the council.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that the court would not interfere with the judge's finding of fact that the date of actual knowledge was November 1999; and that in assessing whether or not the claimant had constructive knowledge of his injury earlier than 1999 for the purposes of section 14 of the Limitation Act 1980, the judge had been entitled to take into account the fact that a person with the claimant's unaddressed dyslexia and inhibited by low self-esteem, would not reasonably seek out expert diagnosis because of his embarrassment.