Woman Receives Seven Figure Compensation Settlement After Brain Injury
15/10/2009
A leading personal injury lawyer has secured a seven-figure brain injury compensation settlement for the ongoing care of a County Durham woman who was left with a 10-minute memory following mistakes in her medical care.
The GP and hospital staff of Cristina Malcolm, now 41, failed to detect a problem which caused Cristina to collapse in her bathroom following a suspected brain haemorrhage in July 2002.
Two weeks later Cristina suffered a more serious brain haemorrhage and was escorted by police to Newcastle General Hospital where doctors undertook life saving surgery in order to remove half a litre of blood from her brain.
The second, more severe, haemorrhage left Cristina with permanent brain damage and with a memory span of just 10 minutes. After nine weeks in intensive care and a 21 week stay in hospital for rehabilitation, Cristina was then discharged and sent home.
Cristina cannot plan anything more than 10 minutes into the future or remember anything 10 minutes into the past. Because of this, she is effectively forced to live in a 20 minute bubble.
John Davis, a partner and brain injury specialist at law firm Irwin Mitchell, represented her husband Sandy Malcolm, 47, in order to pursue a claim for brain injury compensation on the grounds of gross clinical negligence. Action was taken against Mrs. Malcolm’s GP, Dr. James Harrison of Chevely Park Medical Centre, who first visited Mrs. Malcolm as well as the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust.
A settlement of £4.46 million in brain injury compensation was reached when hospital bosses accepted liability for 95 percent of the total claim. The compensation will be used to provide Cristina with the care and support that will be needed throughout her lifetime.
John Davis, partner at Irwin Mitchell in Newcastle, said he was pleased with the outcome of the case: “This is a significant settlement and one which leaves Cristina Malcolm secure for the rest of her life, while Mr. Malcolm will be given the freedom to concentrate on being a husband rather than a full-time carer.
“Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm have had their lives torn apart by this series of medical mistakes. Cristina now requires a substantial amount of care and will continue to do so for the rest of her life.
“There are a whole host of other support services beyond the 24-hour care needs that Cristina has. No amount of money can truly compensate for the constant battle that Cristina and Sandy now face, but with good care and rehab therapy it may be possible to restore some quality of life for them both.”
Mr. Malcolm has spoken out, however, about his anguish over the mistakes in medical care that contributed to his wife’s condition and says that her second brain haemorrhage could have been avoided if due care had been paid and his wife had been treated correctly.
He said: “It is seven years since Cristina collapsed and the confirmation of the settlement is a huge relief, however Cristina could have received this care much earlier if the defendant’s lawyers had admitted liability earlier and had come to a settlement that we have reached today.
I know now that whatever happens to me in the future, she will be cared for. This settlement will be managed and administered by the Court of Protection that will ensure Cristina’s financial and care requirements will be managed by a team of professionals for the rest of her life.
“I initially thought my wife had meningitis and I called Cristina’s GP, Dr James Harrison of Chevely Park Surgery in Durham, to come to our house on a Saturday morning as I believed if my wife did have meningitis then this had to be diagnosed as soon as possible.
“Dr Harrison had all the symptoms my wife was suffering from described to him and he failed to carry out and record the most basic information required by a GP. His examination consisted of checking her pulse for 10 seconds and putting his hand on her forehead to check her temperature then he made a quick diagnosis of a virus.
“Medical convention dictates that a sudden onset of a severe headache which is novel to the patient should be treated as a brain haemorrhage until proven otherwise and Dr Harrison should have recognised the fact that he had a medical emergency on his hands and immediately admitted my wife to hospital.
“Instead he attributed it to a routine virus and we lost three crucial days that could have vastly changed the potential for the hospital staff to detect the first haemorrhage. That delay reduced the chances of the doctors detecting the problem by almost 40 per cent.
“Had Cristina been admitted to hospital by Dr Harrison then the hospital could have detected the initial haemorrhage and could have vastly changed the way Cristina was managed. Had this initial haemorrhage been detected then she had a strong possibility of being treated, recovering from the haemorrhage and returning to a normal life.
“If anything comes out of our ordeal, I want it to be that nobody else endures the nightmare of what we have been through, and continue to go through.
“None of this has been about retribution against the GP or the hospital. In bringing this legal action all I wanted was to ensure that Cristina will be able to spend the rest of her life in comfort and security and with a support structure around her that will be able to compensate for her memory loss. Nothing will ever be able to make her better – our lives have been utterly destroyed by this.
“I strongly want people to realise that sudden, severe headaches which are unique to the sufferer should only be diagnosed at a hospital – and must be treated as a possible brain haemorrhage until it is proven to be otherwise.
“Brain haemorrhages are one of the biggest causes of sudden death among otherwise-healthy young adults and my experience makes me wonder how many of those deaths or severe injuries like my wife’s could have been prevented.”
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