Following the tragic dead of Jack Adcock, a small boy taken to hospital, the junior doctor in charge of his care faced conviction, suspension and erasure from the medical register. A saga that started in 2011 reached its likely conclusion on 13 August 2018 when the Court of Appeal handed down its final decision ([2018] EWCA Civ 1879)
The article looks at each of the criminal and regulatory stages, and the central legal issue about how, if at all, a conviction in the criminal court might affect regulatory determinations, before concluding that:
'...the Court of Appeal’s judgment is highly significant for at least two reasons. First, because it clarifies that criminal courts and professional tribunals perform fundamentally different roles, with different approaches and different objectives. Second, because it confirms that a conviction for gross negligence manslaughter will not necessarily result in a sanction of erasure, and that there is no presumption that it should. The judgment thus makes it clear that being convicted of gross negligence manslaughter is not, in principle, incompatible with continuing to practise medicine.'
The article was co-written with Jake Taylor, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers
To read the article on Legal Action Group website, click here.
The twitter annoucement can be found here.