“The claimant was born on 24 April 1989 at the CityMaternityHospital, Carlisle. He suffers from cerebral palsy caused by oxygen deprivation in the period leading up to his birth. He is cognitively unimpaired but is afflicted with significant physical disabilities. He alleges that his condition was caused by the negligence of the doctors who managed his mother’s labour and for whom the defendant is legally responsible. His case, in short, is that the accumulation of risk factors before and during labour mandated delivery by urgent caesarean section. If this procedure had been carried out, he would have been born uninjured.” (paragraph 1)
“…It is perfectly understandable that those who suffer adverse outcomes from medical procedures will tend to assume that the doctors are to blame particularly where, as in this case, the exercise of a different clinical judgement would have achieved a dramatically better outcome. Nevertheless, the law is clear. Doctors are to be found to be in breach of duty if the decisions they make fall outside the range of reasonable professional opinion. In this case, they did not and the claim must fail.” (paragraph 50)
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