Caught partying on Ibiza hen do, ‘crippled’ liar who sued NHS for £2.5m
A MOTHER sued the NHS for £2.5million claiming she had been left crippled by botched surgery – only to be pictured partying in Ibiza.
Lesley Elder, 50, said she could no longer work or perform routine tasks without help.
But her claim unravelled when NHS lawyers produced photographs of her partying after midnight at her daughter’s hen do.
Elder saw her damages drastically reduced and has now been jailed for lying during the case.
She had sued the George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, after undergoing a vaginal mesh operation in 2010 that it turned out was unnecessary.
Elder, of Poole, Dorset, said she had been left severely disabled by the operation. She had to use a walking stick and the chronic pain in her groin and leg left her unable to do many activities she previously enjoyed. She claimed to have been particularly upset that she had not been able to go to daughter Tania Bunston’s hen do.
But photographs posted on Facebook showed her in an Ibiza nightclub, wearing a straw hat and sash, with her daughter and other women. Elder insisted the trip was not a hen party but a holiday. However the group was female only – and all wore T-shirts with the slogan ‘Tania’s hen party’.
Surveillance by private investigators showed she regularly went shopping and exercised her dog without using a walking stick. The judge hearing her claim in 2017 found Elder, a mother of two who appeared in court in a wheelchair, had ‘grossly, dishonestly and repeatedly’ exaggerated her symptoms
The NHS Trust brought committal proceedings against her over the lies she had told during the case and on Friday she was jailed for five months after being found in contempt of court.
Elder, who hobbled into the High Court using a walking stick, was sentenced in her absence after she appeared to swallow a number of pills and was taken to hospital shortly before the judge returned to the courtroom.
Judge Karen Walden-Smith said: ‘This was a deliberate and persistent making of false statements for the purpose of falsely recovering significant monies from a publiclyfunded body.’
Given the ‘great seriousness’ of the contempt committed by Elder, a jail sentence was inevitable, she added. ‘ This was an attempt to effectively defraud the NHS of a sum of more than £2million – public funds which are desperately needed for frontline services.’
The judge said Elder had suffered a genuine injury as a result of the surgery, which it later transpired was unnecessary because she had been misdiagnosed.
The NHS trust admitted liability but disputed the amount she claimed, and the county court judge at the 2017 hearing ruled Elder was entitled to £120,000.
NHS barrister William Featherby QC told the High Court that Elder had told ‘lies from top to bottom’ and the £2.5million sum claimed was ‘inflated beyond reason’.
Elder had previously been a support worker for disabled children, and a ‘dynamic, proactive person’ but her character changed following the operation, her barrister Michael Mansfield QC said.