Will I have to go to court and give evidence?

If your case has the support of our medical experts, who have advised that your treatment was negligent, the case will proceed against the Defendant. Whilst there is always a possibility of having to give your evidence in court, in reality very few medical negligence cases get as far as trial. The majority of cases of injury caused by negligent treatment are settled by a payment of damages without the need to attend court. This can happen at any time during the course of a claim, even up to the day before a trial is due to start.

The court is, however, required to approve all cases which involve damages awarded to children or to those who do not have the ability to conduct their own affairs, and this takes place by way of a short court hearing.

Will I have to talk about what happened to me?

We understand and appreciate that you are probably not going to want to repeat what happened to you to a series of professionals. Whilst we do not need you to tell us in detail what happened to you initially, of course, we need to have some information as to what happened so that we can advise you as to whether you are likely to have a claim or not.

As investigations continue, we are likely to have to prepare a witness statement for you and so we will need you to be as open as you feel you can be about what happened so that the court understands what happened. You will also probably need to meet with a medical expert, perhaps a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and you will need to be open with them about what happened so that they can properly assess how you have been affected, although they are likely to have a copy of your statement if already prepared so this will help limit the number of times you need to repeat yourself. On some occasions, the defendant might also instruct its own medical expert to assess how you have been affected.