Record award after brain damage
NZPA-Reuter London A brain-damaged boy has been given $611,000, the highest damages awarded in Britain for personal injury. The award was for David Taylor, of Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, who was left irreversibly braindamaged and epileptic after a bout of meningitis at the age of one.
Mr Justice Smith said at Teesside Crown Court that David could speak only in grunts, was totally deaf, an epileptic, paralysed down his right side, walked with a “bizarre” gait and could not control his bowels or bladder.
“It is as if, at the age of 12 months, a shutter came down preventing any future development . . . David was transformed from a bright, happy, and normal little boy to a grossly mentally and physically disabled boy. There is no prospect of a cure.”
Child experts say David has a mental age of 12 to 15 months, and that he will never grow up mentally.
His family doctor, Dr William Glass, of Backworth, Whitley Bay, admitted liability by not recognising David’s illness until it was too late.
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Press, 26 May 1979, Page 9
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177Record award after brain damage Press, 26 May 1979, Page 9
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