Professional Negligence - Edwards v Hugh James Ford Simey

Court of Appeal rules on assessing damages in a professional negligence case

It was alleged that the defendant firm of solicitors had negligently advised the original claimant in this action to abandon an incremental claim under a scheme to compensate former miners suffering from a condition known as vibration white finger. The key issue in this case was whether the recorder had erred in taking into account evidence which had not (and could not have) been available at the time of the settlement in this case when assessing the claimant's loss (namely, a 2013 report of a jointly instructed expert who had assessed the severity of the deceased's condition as being lower than that reported in a medical assessment process report produced in 2003 (the year in which the claim settled)).