compensation query in The AnswerBank: Law

Sorry to hear what happened but the duty of care was to your mum in law, not to anyone else. That's why the solicitor is saying what he/she is.

gardener2

Sadly in some cases cancer diagnosis can be a very inexact science until too late albeit most oncologists would disagree. Seven years ago I was diagnosed with secondary tumours on the lung by the very best specialists at the Royal Marsden.I prepared for the worst. Eventually I was told the 'tumours' were not growing,could not be malignant and therefore must be benign nodules.The 'shadow' remains on my scans but obviously they were not cancerous. If you consider the opposite of this scenario it can be understood why-in the case of your mother in law- specialist may not be 'wrong' in their diagnosis but only relying on the best evidence available to them at a given time.They may have been subjectively mistaken when interpreting scans but not negligent.
Given this, the likelyhood of your not suffering any financial loss and your mother in law now being dead any litigation would be bound to fail..
I hope you'll excuse any bluntness,I would hate to see you compound your loss by persuing a futile cause.

Peter Pedant

I am sorry to hear of your Mum's death in such distressing circumstances

Obviously also it might have been better for her to take legal advice about a pay out before her death she must have been aware a 'mistake' had been made.

Mistakes by Doctors are paid for to put the patient back in the position she was before the mistake was made. The shadows in her lungs were cancers and if she went to the doctor with them already there, then she was unlikely to live very long

and you add �3500 for wrongful death and it all adds up to not very much.

No-one should have told the poor old lady that the mistake was so bad that it would pay off her own mortgage and that of her three children, and be a long term bank roll for the grandchildren.

Court pay outs dont work like that .

When my sister broke her back in a car accident - her comment was : this car is going to go into us....
she later said, look I havent gained anything.
I have a new car but the old one was a write off
and I was paid for 12 weeks off work, not very much as I got statutory sick pay and sickness insurance.
Honestly PP I have got nothing out of this.

and I said, this is how it is meant to work.........

PP

Peter Pedant

I am sorry to hear of your Mum's death in such distressing circumstances

Obviously also it might have been better for her to take legal advice about a pay out before her death she must have been aware a 'mistake' had been made.

Mistakes by Doctors are paid for to put the patient back in the position she was before the mistake was made. The shadows in her lungs were cancers and if she went to the doctor with them already there, then she was unlikely to live very long

and you add �3500 for wrongful death and it all adds up to not very much.

No-one should have told the poor old lady that the mistake was so bad that it would pay off her own mortgage and that of her three children, and be a long term bank roll for the grandchildren.

Court pay outs dont work like that .

When my sister broke her back in a car accident - her comment was : this car is going to go into us....
she later said, look I havent gained anything.
I have a new car but the old one was a write off
and I was paid for 12 weeks off work, not very much as I got statutory sick pay and sickness insurance.
Honestly PP I have got nothing out of this.

and I said, this is how it is meant to work.........

PP

Peter Pedant

Try this:

http://icvts.ctsnetjournals.org/cgi/content/ab stract/icvts.2005.125856v1

in one group 17 out of 100 were alive at five years. IN view of the fact that therefore 83 were dead, I regard the treatment success rate as peanuts

It is for these reasons that when I had my own ca operation for cancer of the colon, I said to the surgeon I do not want you to touch my lung or liver, if they are affected please just sew me up.

He said, I dont know if I can do that, and I said, Yes you can.

tigwig

Question Author

thanks for your answers. Gardener, doctors did suspect that tincerous as we have been able to gain some of her medical notes that another doctor who was so appaled when he found out what had happened got for us. They plainly describe when they first found the tumour and it getting wose. the last one was dated last August and in black and white it states that the tumour now no longer looks like an arithtic nodule (she suffered severe arthritis) it looks far more sinister and has this been diagnosed, still nothing was done. The people who are advising my sister in law how to proceed ICIS I think it is have said they have never seen anything as bad in their whole careers as they didn't just mess up an on the cancer. They also failed to notice she had a perforated bowel until it was almost too late and she had life saving emergency surgery where they actually told her and us she was going to die! sorry to go on but I am mad now going over it again! not to mention the amount of times she went in agony to her own GPs and even said herself is is cancer. They just dismissed her and have now apologised like that makes it ok

themas

Action against medical accidents may be able to advise - www.avma.org.uk They can provide a list of solicitors experienced in clinical negligence cases. Look at the website and ring them.

Peter Pedant

I agree - get AVMA on the job

it is obvious you need professional legal help
and not the usual crowd of walk-ins you get on AB

chitchat

Tihwig - I too lost my dad last month to lung cancer. Only we didnt know about it until after the post mortem. He was in hospital 13 days before he died and it wasnt picked up there either. I know your circumstances are a bit different, but asking for compensation to pay of your mortgage is not what its about. Dad has died and we miss him and no amount of money will lessen the pain or the hurt that we are feeling or bring him back.

tigwig

Question Author

chitchat you are right no amount of money will ease our pain but what it will do is give us a tiny bit of pleasure which is surely no more than we deserve since our lifes have been ruined by this. Not only are we trying to come to terms with my mum in laws death but also dealing with the fact that she would still be here if several of these highly paid doctors had done their jobs properly. It wasn't just 1 mistake by 1 person it was a whole catalogue of errors resulting in her death and I want those responsible to pay for what they have done

tigwig

Question Author

I have just read through your answers again and would like to point out that my mum in law was not a 'poor old lady' as you assume, she was only 57 and robbed of seeing her grandchildren etc and made her husband a widow at 56, her children losing their mum at 30 and 33. She was also told by the doctors to fight the case as well in fact one even advised her what to do (not the ones who put her in that state)

chitchat

Tigwig I agree that the doctors who made these mistakes should be held accountable so that no one else should have to go through what you are going through.

But your post comes across to me that you all want to do is receive as much compensation as you can in order to clear your mortgages. If your mum had lived how would your mortgages have been paid? Did she pay them for you with her earnings? If she did then you are quite right to fight for a bigger amount of compensation. If not - then hopefully you will get enough to cover the cost of her funeral.

I am sorry that your family is going through this but you may have to accept that you are all going to go through a very stressful time with no guarantee of success.

tigwig

Question Author

Chitchat you are so wrong about me. It was never in my thoughts to have my mortgage paid off it was what my mum in law said as she lay dying in the hospice. I can sort of see where you are coming from but please believe me I am not some money grabbing monster! I guess now we have all gone through the usual stages of grief which are utter despair and waking up in the morning and really not knowing how you can go on and going to bed and crying yourself to sleep every night. Well that phase has ended to a certain extent and now we are very angry and quite rightly so I believe. These doctors neglected her so many times and we have proof of this in several documents and I now just feel why the hell shouldn't we screw them for every penny? It was what my mum in law wanted first and foremost and nothing would make her happier than knowing we would be financially secure. i would like to add at this point that we have had severe difficulty in the last months paying our bills etc due to the amount of time my husband had off work unpaid while we watched his mum deteriate and die over weeks. Lets not forget this was not a clear cut case of someone being unlucky enough to get cancer and die, it very clearly could have been prevented and that is something me and my entire family will never come to terms with.

spikeyhair

I can understand your situation and people have been very responsive in providing useful suggestions.
Another consideration is that the professionals concerned should learn from this and go a little bit further of a distance should similar circumstances present again, if you persist in making a complaint (through ICAS or equivalent) one would hope that these professionals will have to answer questions that will remind them of the inadequacy of their actions at the time - and may help any future decisions.
I appreciate this may not help you and your family but a change may come for someone else and they may not have to go through the same situation.

compensation query

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