City optometrist should not have been struck off, top judge rules

A RETIRED Coventry optometrist who admitted “grave errors” after an elderly patient went blind was wrongly struck off, the High Court has ruled.

Mathew Clarke, who ran Clarke Opticians in the city, was erased from the register by the General Optical Council (GOC) on June 28 last year.

But now a judge has ruled that was “wholly disproportionate” given that the remorseful optometrist had already retired from the profession.

Mr Clarke was the subject of a report in the Coventry Telegraph in 2013 after Allesley pensioner Gordon Wilday lost his sight.

The article said he had repeatedly missed warning signs of a tumour between 2004 and 2009, leading to a crucial delay in diagnosis.

Mr Wilday said it took five years of complaining about problems with his sight at the Daventry Road opticians before he was referred to hospital.

And at the hospital it was a further six months before Gordon received a crucial brain scan.

Mr Wilday was called in for an emergency operation after the long-awaited scan revealed a tumour which had grown to the size of a walnut and was causing bleeding on the brain.

Most of the malignant tumour was removed but it was too late to save his sight and his vision continued to deteriorate.

Gordon, who became registered blind, lost the vision in his right eye and could only see shadows in his left.

Mr Clarke admitted that, although his clinical judgment seemed appropriate at the time, he could have managed the pensioner’s symptoms better.

He “always fully accepted that he was at fault” and had taken “full responsibility” for the “grave errors” he made, said Mr Justice Fraser.

The stress had “taken its toll on my mental and physical fitness” and he decided to sell his business and quit the profession for good.

The GOC decided to suspend him in 2015 but changed tack following a review and struck him off in June last year.

Challenging the decision, Mr Clarke’s lawyers said it was “unnecessary, disproportionate and unfair”.

The judge pointed out that Mr Clarke had a “long and otherwise unblemished” professional career.

He had admitted his faults in treating the pensioner and left the profession voluntarily “with a heavy heart”.

He “wished entirely to remove himself from the profession” and had no intention to ever practise again.

Mr Justice Fraser said the GOC’s decision to strike him off was “wholly disproportionate” and “plainly and obviously wrong”.

The body should have concluded that, given Mr Clarke’s retirement, “the likelihood of repetition was very close to zero”.