S J EDNEY SOLICITORS WISH THEIR READERS A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHTS – 2008

2008 has been another busy year for S J Edney Solicitors. We are happy to report that Chris Evans joined our firm during November 2007. He is a qualified Dentist and is hoping to re-train as a solicitor. He is assisting Seamus Edney with his medical negligence workload and has proved to be an important addition to the practice.

We are also pleased to report that Denis Knight re-joined our firm during the early part of 2008. He is an experienced personal injury lawyer who is assisting Seamus Edney with his personal injury files.

Seamus Edney continues to maintain an exclusively Claimant specialist personal injury and clinical negligence practice managing claims covering all types of accidents to include those of maximum severity.

He is only one of a handful of solicitors in the country to be on both the Law Society’s Specialist Panels for clinical negligence and personal injury and he is also on the Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA’s) specialist clinical negligence panel. Seamus is also on the Headway approved Personal Injury Solicitors List and holds Senior Litigator status with the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).

We have also had another successful year in winning cases for our clients. Among the cases concluded during 2008 include a £3 million settlement for a young man with a serious brain injury who will now need care and support for the rest of his life. We also successfully acted for Arnel Cabrera in his clinical negligence claim against Great Western Hospital arising from the tragic death of his wife during 2004. This case attracted huge media interest and we understand that we are the first law firm in legal history to obtain an unlawful killing verdict against a hospital at an Inquest.

We are a small no win no fee firm (out of choice) and we believe that the key to our success is to ensure that we provide all our clients with an excellent service at all times – we know if we don’t, we simply will not survive. With the advent of the new Legal Services Act, large concerns like Tescos and the Co-op will soon be able to provide legal services to their customers and will compete with the traditional law firm in the same way that supermarkets have been able to compete with other sectors. We are confident that we will be able to meet this challenge and continue to prosper in the future.

 

CANCER PATIENTS MISDIAGNOSED

An overseas surgeon drafted in to help cut NHS waiting lists is at the centre of a row over bowel cancer misdiagnosis at an independent Treatment Centre in Shepton Mallett, Somerset. It is reported that at least 1 patient has died and it is believed many more may be terminally ill, having allegedly been wrongly told that they do not have cancer after tests by a Dutch doctor who resigned during May 2008. Some 1,800 tests by him are being reviewed.

 

HSE STATISTICS 2007/2008

The latest national statistics on work related illness and workplace injuries, produced by the Health & Safety Executive were released on the 29 October 2008 which make depressing reading!

The key facts for 2007/08 are:-

Ill Health

  • 2.1 million people were suffering from an illness (long standing as well as new cases) they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work
  • 1.3 million of these cases were suffered by people working during the year, of which 563,000 were new cases
  • 2,056 people died of mesothelioma (2006), and thousands more from other occupational cancers and lung diseases

Injuries

  • 229 workers were killed at work, a rate of 0.8 per 100,000 workers
  • 136,771 other injuries to employees were reported under RIDDOR, a rate of 517.9 per 100,000 employees
  • 299,000 reportable injuries occurred, according to the Labour Force (LFS), Survey), a rate of 1000 per 100,000 workers

Working days lost

  • 34 million days were lost overall (1.4 days per worker), 28 million due to work-related ill health and 6 million due to workplace injury