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Medical negligence and disclosure of alternative treatments

McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board [2023] UKSC 26

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Ming Ren Tan Open the ORCID record for Ming Ren Tan [Opens in a new window]
Ming Ren Tan*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore
*
Email: [email protected]
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Extract

Recent years have witnessed significant developments in medical negligence jurisprudence. In 2015, the Supreme Court in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board famously departed from the House of Lords decision in Sidaway v Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital by ruling that the professional practice test set out in Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee no longer applied to the doctor's duty to give advice to the patient. In particular, the Supreme Court in Montgomery held as follows:

The doctor is … under a duty to take reasonable care to ensure that the patient is aware of any material risks involved in any recommended treatment, and of any reasonable alternative or variant treatments. The test of materiality is whether, in the circumstances of the particular case, a reasonable person in the patient's position would be likely to attach significance to the risk, or the doctor is or should reasonably be aware that the particular patient would be likely to attach significance to it.

Type
Current Developments: Case Comment
Information
Legal Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 5
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Legal Scholars

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful for helpful feedback from the anonymous reviewer.

References

1 [2015] UKSC 11, [2015] AC 1430.

2 [1985] AC 871.

3 [1957] 1 WLR 582.

4 Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board, above n 1, at [87].

5 Heywood, R and Miola, J ‘The changing face of pre-operative medical disclosure: placing the patient at the heart of the matter’ (2017) 133 Law Quarterly Review 296 at 307Google Scholar.

6 Bagshaw, R ‘Modernising the doctor's duty to disclose risks of treatment’ (2016) 132 Law Quarterly Review 182 at 185Google Scholar.

7 McGrath, CP ‘“Trust me, I'm a patient …”: disclosure standards and the patient's right to decide’ (2015) 74 Cambridge Law Journal 211 at 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 [2023] UKSC 26, [2023] 3 WLR 321.

9 Ibid, at [6].

10 Ibid, at [5].

11 Ibid, at [22].

12 Ibid, at [29].

13 Ibid, at [30].

14 Ibid, at [31].

15 [2018] CSOH 57, 2018 SLT 535.

16 McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board, above n 8, at [35]–[38].

17 Ibid, at [39]–[40].

18 Ibid, at [83].

19 Ibid, at [56].

20 Ibid, at [59]–[62].

21 Ibid, at [63]–[66].

22 Ibid, at [67]–[70].

23 Ibid, at [71].

24 Ibid, at [72]–[73].

25 Ibid, at [74]–[77].

26 Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board, above n 1, at [87].

27 [2017] SGCA 38, [2017] 2 SLR 492.

28 Ibid, at [126].

29 Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board, above n 1, at [87].

30 Hii Chii Kok v Ooi Peng Jin London Lucien, above n 27, at [128].

31 Ibid, at [128].

32 Ibid, at [142].

33 GKY Chan ‘Recent judicial developments in Singapore tort law’ (2020) Journal of the Malaysian Judiciary 278 at 294.

34 McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board, above n 8, at [37]–[38].

35 Ibid, at [71].

36 Chan, above n 33, at 294.

37 Austin, LV ‘Hii Chii Kok v (1) Ooi Peng Jin London Lucien; (2) National Cancer Centre: modifying Montgomery’ (2019) 27 Medical Law Review 339 at 340CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Amirthalingam, K ‘Upending the medical duty to advise: legislating the standard of care in Singapore’ (2022) 22 Medical Law International 189 at 200–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Ibid, at 213.

40 Austin, above n 37, at 351.

41 Farrell, AM and Dove, ES Mason and McCall Smith's Law and Medical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 12th edn, 2023) pp 232–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Jaffer, Z and Reed-Berendt, R ‘Defining the boundaries of Montgomery: a Scottish approach’ (2022) 38 Journal of Professional Negligence 105 at 110Google Scholar.

43 Ibid, at 110.

44 Burrows, Lord ‘Judges and academics, and the endless road to unattainable perfection’ (2022) 55 Israel Law Review 50 at 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 [2024] UKSC 1, [2024] 2 WLR 417.

46 Ibid, at [22].

47 Ibid, at [245].

48 Carr, Lady Justice ‘“Delicate plants”, “loose cannons”, or “a marriage of true minds”? The role of academic literature in judicial decision-making’ (2023) 23 Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal 1 at 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Herring, J Medical Law and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9th edn, 2022) p 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.