On 19 July 2005 the Court approved a compensation award for our client, nine year old Sam, whose birth at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey, in 1996 was badly mismanaged.
The hospital admitted that Sam should have been born earlier than he was and that a failure to notice abnormalities in the foetal heart monitor trace had led to Sam becoming asphyxiated. As a result, Sam suffers from profound disabilities. He is confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak. He needs twenty-four hour care for the rest of his life.
Sam’s compensation was made under the new “Periodic Payment” legislation, which came into force in April 2005. This means that the NHS will pay him enough money, every year for the rest of his life (index linked), to cover his carers’ salaries, equipment costs, treatment regime, special schooling and the adaptation of the family home. At the time it was made it was believed to be the largest award of this nature made to date.
