Whilst at a recent meeting with a Barrister in London, (whom I should mention is very experienced in dealing with dental claims and who I have worked with for a very long time) mentioned that the case in question which we were discussing was one of the most complicated claims that he had every dealt with. Counsel is also a Deputy District Judge who regularly sits in the London Courts and a Barrister with many years experience dealing with high value and complex claims.
By way of background, the case in front of us at the time was a periodontal or gum disease claim involving a young female. The female in question had attended her dentist for the past 20 years with no gaps in her treatment. One day her dentist was on holiday when she saw the practice locum who told her that she had periodontal problems and would likely loose her teeth. This came as a massive shock to her as it was never mentioned before.
The difficulty was (as is usually the case in most dental claims)- one of causation. My client independent periodontal expert had looked at the xrays that were taken some 20 years apart-which showed very little deterioration of one area of the jawbone, meaning that my clients actual injury was very limited to the loss of just a couple of teeth- Now I should point out that it was only a few months before that I was sat with the same Barrister discussing a similar gum disease claim with a different client in which the client had lost nearly all 32 of her teeth. In the current case, my client was extremely lucky to not have lost very many teeth at all with little prospect of losing any more in the future. This was good news for her but bad news for her claim. The issue here was one of causation and injury. The argument being that whilst the defendant dentist had clearly been negligent in not carrying out basic checks for gum disease over a number of years, the claimant had only suffered a very minor injury with the loss of one tooth. The claimants expert was of the view that the treatment now was the same or very similar as would have been needed 20 years ago.
A seemingly straightforward claim can be turned on its head with the input of a medical expert opinion and one which was on the face of it quite straightforward can suddenly become very complicated, usually with the issue of causation.
My Barrister had mentioned in passing that dental claims are just as complex as brain injury or spinal injury claims and sometimes even more so – but somehow do not get the recognition they deserve as regards complexity. I think that injury to the teeth is not taken as seriously or at least worth as much as say other injuries affecting other parts of the body. In saying that however, all dental claims are always allocated to the multi-track (reserved for the most serious claims) due to complexity when in Court proceedings -so the judiciary do recognise that these dental claims can be complicated.
This got me thinking. The work that I had put into the claim behind the scenes was worth many hundreds of hours which included a 30 page letter of claim, the examination of hundreds of pages of clinical notes, writing a long and complicated letter of claim, drafting instructions to our Barrister and also instructions to our independent expert not to mention general correspondence with the dentists defence organisation.
After my client had been given legal advice on the merits of her claim (which subsequently settled out of court) the discussion turned to one of complexity and how most Judges who have not dealt with a dental claim before would probably question just how complex such a claim could be, after all we are just dealing with teeth!