#cases #clinical-negligence #negligence #tort

Bolitho v City & Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232

Facts: A two year old child suffered severe brain damage and died after a paediatric registrar failed to attend to him. It was shown that even if the child had been attended to, he would not have been intubated. There were opposing expert opinions as to the reasonableness of the registrar's argument that, had she attended, she would not have intubated the child. The House of Lords held that if a professional opinion was not capable of withstanding logical analysis, the judge was entitled to hold that it could not provide the benchmark by reference to which the doctor’s conduct fell to be assessed. In most cases, however, the fact that experts in the field were of a particular opinion would be a demonstration of the reasonableness of that opinion.