
Dental claim settlement – Failure to diagnose and treat gum disease
A great result today for a Southampton, based dental claim client. £7000 in compensation (out of court) for his dentist failing to diagnose and treat gum disease (periodontal disease). My client attended the dentist (Dr W) on 51 separate occasions for dental treatment from 1987 until 2016. My client (Mr D) was just 34 years of age. Most of the dental appointments were limited to simple examinations with scaling and polishing being carried out from 2001 onwards. A BPE (Basic

No justice for Yorkshire dental patient.
Mr S was treated by a dentist in Yorkshire for wrongful extraction of two upper teeth. The claim was quite straightforward -or so I thought. Mr S attended the dentist Mr B back in 2014 for treatment. UR4 was extracted and the claimant left the practice. He returned some two hours later in pain and UR5 was also then extracted. The practice was closed when he returned again so the claimant decided to attend Rotherham A&E. The registrar at A&E diagnosed an abscess and told t

Dental claims and the GDC - Improving access to justice?
Did you know that until quite recently the General Dental Council (GDC) made the addresses of all registered dentists freely available online- which made my job as a dental solicitor much easier; I could simply log onto the GDC website, search a name and the registered address of that individual would pop up. This was really helpful in tracing the whereabouts of certain dentists accused of negligence who need to be contacted and put on notice of a potential claim. From Octob

Dental claim settlement – Inferior Alveolar Nerve injury during wisdom tooth extraction
A great result today for a Lancashire based dental claim client. £5000 in settlement compensation for causing a nerve injury during a lower left wisdom tooth extraction. My client underwent extraction of LL8 wisdom tooth back in December of 2014. At the appointment, the dentist failed to advise the claimant that extraction of the LL8 may be problematic due to the closeness of the inferior alveolar nerve. The claimant was transferred to another dentist with a shorter waiting

Recording dental consultations? There could be an easier way....
In a recent article written by Leo Briggs who is deputy head of the Dental Defence Union www.theddu.com he explores the increase in recorded consultations and how these can benefit both dentists and patients – http://www.dentistry.co.uk/2017/04/13/thinking-recording-dental-consultations/ Since dealing with dental claims since 2001, I have only ever come across a handful of clients that have recorded their consultations with their dentists and this was purely for the purpose o

Stressed? Don't become a Solicitor...
The Lawgazette (24 April 2017) writes that one in four junior lawyers suffer from "severe" stress levels at work and that more than 90% said that they experience "some" stress. I think that the legal profession as a whole is stressed but the survey that was undertaken suggests that more than a third of junior lawyers had made a mistake that would not have happened had they not been overworked. The Law society has now called on firms to provide better training and support to