Mother wins £14m for boy left disabled when doctors bungled birth
IT has taken 13 years and every last scrap of a mother’s determination and courage. Yesterday Suzanne Adams finally won a battle for compensation for her 12-year-old son who was left disabled after NHS doctors bungled his birth. Her son James Robshaw, who has cerebral palsy, is now in line for a possible record payout of around £14million.
His birth at Lincoln County Hospital in 2002 was ‘negligently mishandled’ after he was starved of oxygen, leaving him catastrophically disabled and dependent on others, the High Court ruled.
His cerebral palsy affects his movement in all four limbs, and he has to communicate using a machine he controls with eye movements.
But James is now in line for a payment of at least £ 10million and up to £18million.
Following the 11- day hearing his lawyers, Access Legal, estimate the final settlement could be £14.6million. The current record in a clinical negligence case is around £15million.
James’s QC, Susan Rodway, said he was starved of oxygen at birth due to doctors’ failure to pick up on ‘abnormal changes’ during the latter stages of labour, telling the court: ‘He was born in a poor condition.’
Miss Rodway added he was later diagnosed as suffering from a dangerous swelling of the brain.
Miss Adams sued the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust on her son’s behalf and it has admitted negligence and full liability to compensate him for his injuries.
The Trust admitted liability in 2009. However it took a further six years for Miss Adams to win the fight for damages for James and the two parties’ lawyers have disputed the amount of compensation he should receive.
Yesterday she said: ‘It’s really difficult looking after James. He can’t sit up on his own, he can’t walk or crawl, he can’t feed himself, he can’t [go to the] toilet himself, he can’t get dressed, he can’t speak very well.
‘James requires 24-hour care, we need extra support with his education, he also needs an awful lot of specialist equipment so that he’s able to do ordinary things that we take for granted.’
Speaking in a video posted on YouTube yesterday by Access Legal, Miss Adams relived the drama of her son’s arrival in December 2002.
She had endured a long labour and a midwife had spoken to her about having a caesarean section.
But the midwife subsequently forgot about her and she gave birth naturally, Miss Adams said. The two midwives who monitored her then failed to notice James’s heart rate was abnormal. She said he was ‘blue and floppy’ and had to be resuscitated when he was born. He was a week old before she could give him a cuddle because he was ‘too poorly’.
The settlement means James will have a better quality of life and will receive appropriate care.
Miss Adams said: ‘I have really gone from the depths of despair, a very black sort of place, but as the legal case has progressed, I can now see a tiny light at the end of the tunnel.’
Awarding the payout, Mr Justice Foskett described James as ‘a very active, quite exceptional, young man’ who has full insight into how limited his life is. He also praised his mother for the care she has given him since his birth. Miss Adams has been a single mother to James following her split from his father when their son was 18 months old.
The payout will include £290,000 for James’s pain and suffering and very large sums to cover his lost earnings, specialised accommodation, and the costs of his future care.
The court previously heard he and his mother are living in a rented bungalow in Lincoln, but a more suitable home has already been bought in the Skellingthorpe area. Mr Foskett added James had received more than £1.7million in interim compensation before his case came to court.
His lawyers sought £18million on his behalf – an £11.2million lump sum, plus annual, index-linked and taxfree payments to cover the costs of his care for life. However, NHS lawyers argued for a lump sum of around £7.45million. The compensation will fall somewhere between those figures but has yet to be finally calculated.
‘Negligently mishandled’