Express Solicitors secure £1.9 million after spinal surgery failures

Precedent for litigation

This was a difficult case to approach, which led to four other firms rejecting it out of hand before Express Solicitors took it on. The main difficulty was that the surgeon in question was a nationally recognised expert in the field and it would need to be accepted that the clot was caused by surgical malpractice.

Express Solicitors’ Ben Gent had this to say on the case,

“The fact that this case scared off other firms didn’t faze us. We approached it like we would any other: with compassion, understanding, and a tireless pursuit for justice for our client.”

With relation to what ultimately caused the damage to the spine, there were two lines of argument. The first was that a highly respected neurosurgeon had made a basic mistake when planning the surgery. The argument being that the size and location of the disc prolapse meant that it would have been easier to access through the chest, as opposed through the back, avoiding the spine entirely.

This asserted that Mr Jefferson’s spinal cord had been damaged by contact with surgical instruments which would have been avoided with a better choice of approach. It also meant that Mr Jefferson would have had a near full recovery from appropriately performed surgery. These are hard charges to level at one of the country’s leading neurosurgeons.

The counter argument would be that the spinal cord was damaged by the blood clot and it can’t be proven that this was as a result of the surgery. However, on their own, blood clots usually develop over time.

This means that neurological symptoms would have progressed gradually as well. Mr Jefferson, on the other hand, suffered immediate and profound paralysis. If this was the case, then he still would have suffered severe neurological damage even if the clot was swiftly removed.