Rogue surgeon’s private victims may be denied payouts

CHIEF REPORTER HUNDREDS of private patients of Ian Paterson, the rogue breast surgeon facing jail for mutilating women, may be denied compensation due to a legal loophole.

Victims treated by Paterson have expressed their outrage that they are having to fight in the courts for payouts.

has been told that almost all NHS cases involving Paterson have been settled but private cases remain ongoing.

A civil claim, expected to go to trial later in the year, is being brought by about 400 women who suffered at the hands of the surgeon. Paterson, 59, an NHS consultant, also carried out needless and botched operations on women at two private hospitals in the West Midlands run by Spire Healthcare between 1993 and 2012.

But Spire has argued that because it did not employ Paterson, the company should not be held responsible. Paterson’s insurers, Medical Defence Union (MDU), has written to victims’ lawyers saying they are not liable either. A court will now decide who is responsible.

Paterson was found guilty after a seven-week criminal trial at Nottingham Crown Court of 17 counts of wounding with intent and three further unlawful wounding charges involving 10 patients.

The Heart of England NHS Trust had first been warned about Paterson’s conduct as long ago as 2003. He had also been suspended by a previous NHS hospital in the mid Nineties. Sarah Jane Downing, who underwent needless breast surgery at Spire Parkway hospital in Solihull in 1998, has spoken of her disgust at the private hospital’s refusal to pay victims’ compensation.

“We are all devastated by what Mr Paterson did to us,” she told a local newspaper. “Spire continue to add to our suffering by denying any responsibility for what happened. I’m horrified by the way Spire has treated us.”

A spokesman for Irwin Mitchell, one law firm suing Spire and Paterson, said: