Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:31:08

From: Andrew Tettenborn

Subject: Doctors' duties

Some people like to build florilegia of when duties are, and aren't, owed in tort. Others just need ideas for exam questions. In either case, you might care to lighten the pre-Xmas week by looking at

West Bromwich Albion Football Club Ltd v El-Safty [2005] EWHC 2866 (QB) (14 December 2005)

Football club sends its injured player to see physician, and pays the physician. Physician misadvises treatment: as a result player can't play, and club sues physician for its losses (no doubt in the same spirit as a slave-owner deprived of services might have sued a sawbones in the Southern US pre-1861).

Nothing doing. There's no contract between club and surgeon. Nor is there proximity; and for good measure, not just and equitable.

And another thought. This was a preliminary issue as to duty: but I'd have loved to see how WBA pleaded its schedule of losses. Loss of a chance of extra income from possibly beating Man U? Wages of the injured player [even though they'd have been paid anyway]? Unfortunately we'll now never know.

Andrew

Andrew Tettenborn
Bracton Professor of Law, University of Exeter, England

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Lawyer (n): One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Litigation (n): A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

- Ambrose Bierce (1906).

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