Court agrees bank is liable for doctor’s ‘assaults’

A GROUP who allege they were sexually assaulted by a doctor carrying out medicals for Barclays Bank have won another stage in their damages action.

The 126 claimants – mostly women – were examined without chaperones between 1968 and 1984 by Dr Gordon Bates at his Newcastle home.

A posthumous police investigation begun in 2012 – three years after Dr Bates’s death at the age of 83 – concluded there would have been sufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution if he had not died. At the hearing of a preliminary issue at London’s High Court a year ago, Mrs Justice Nicola Davies ruled that Barclays was “vicariously liable for any assaults that any claimant may prove to have been perpetuated” by Dr Bates in the course of medical examinations carried out at the request of Barclays either before or during their employment.

Lord Faulks QC, for Barclays, said it did not admit or deny the allegations, but Dr Bates would be liable for any assaults he perpetrated.

But the judge said the fact that Dr Bates organised his own professional life did not negate an argument that he was under the control of the bank and the alleged abuse was “inextricably interwoven” with the carrying out of his duties pursuant to his engagement by Barclays.

Dismissing the bank’s challenge at the Court of Appeal yesterday, Sir Brian Leveson, Lord Justice McCombe and Lord Justice Irwin said that the judge’s conclusions were correct.