LAW OF TORTS

SEMINAR
Topic/Case – HUCKS v COLE

By – HITESH.M
 An act or omission (failure to act) by a medical professional
that deviates from the accepted medical standard of care.
 medical negligence occurs when a doctor, dentist, nurse,
surgeon or any other medical professional performs their job in a
way that deviates from the accepted medical standard of care.
 if a doctor provides treatment that is sub-standard in terms of
accepted medical norms under the circumstances, then that
doctor has failed to perform his or her duty, and is said to be
negligent
a. Duty: The duty of care owed to patients.

b. Dereliction: Or breach of this duty of care.

c. Direct cause: Establishing that the breach caused injury to a

patient.

d. Damages: The economic and noneconomic losses suffered by

the patient as a result of their injury or illness.
 Sachs LJ, Denning MR, Diplock LJ (three judge bench)
 LJ – Lord Justice, MR – Master of the Rolls

 [1968] 117, New L.J. 469.

 [1993] 4 Med LR 393, Times. 9 May 1968
England and Wales
 A doctor failed to treat with penicillin a patient, the plaintiff, in a maternity
ward who was suffering from septic spots on her skin though he knew
them to contain organisms capable of leading to puerperal fever.
 Several distinguished doctors gave evidence that they would not, in
the circumstances, have treated with penicillin.
 Held: The defendant was negligent. There was a lacuna in professional
practice and that the defendant had knowingly taken an easily avoidable risk
which elementary training had instructed him to avoid.
 As, in the court’s judgment, there was no proper basis for the practice of not
giving penicillin, it was not reasonable for the medical practitioner to
expose his patient to that risk. : (
 A doctor is not negligent if what he has done would be endorsed
by a responsible body of medical opinion in the relevant specialty
at the material time.
 Supreme Court of India
 1 October, 2018
 His Lordship Abhay Manohar Sapre quoted with approval, the subtle
observations of Lord Denning made in Hucks vs. Cole [1968] 118, New L.J.
469. namely, “ a medical practitioner was not to be held liable simply because
things went wrong from mischance or misadventure or through an error of
judgement in choosing one reasonable course of treatment in preference of
another. A medical practitioner would be held liable only where his conduct
fell below that of the standards of a reasonably competent practitioner in his
field.”